 Yeah. Two, two. Yeah. Yeah, no worries. Waste them back so you just wait for them. You don't look short. That's fine. Yeah, thank you. What's the time? Okay, I've just seen a couple of people coming in. How'd you shut everyone up? How'd you shut everyone up? I don't know. What? You don't look short. Two, two. Yeah. I don't know why I said that. You reached them back so you just waited for them. You don't look short. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a very great pleasure to welcome you all to the 2021 Sackie and Micro-Dockerel Memorial Lecture. I'm Professor Neil Barr, Head of Department of the Defence Studies Department, King's College London, and I will chair this session tonight. This lecture originated with the International History Group of the University of London as a means of paying tribute to Sackie and has now become a memorial for both Sackie and Micro-Dockerel, who together had such a profound impact and influence on the War Studies Department and the field of international history. I'm pleased to say that the War Studies Meeting Room has been renamed the Dockerel Room, and this fine portrait of Sackie painted by Lola Frost will be unveiled formally in the new year. I'll explain very briefly the format for this evening. We will hear from our distinguished guest speaker, followed by a period of questions and answers, and there will then be a reception to which you are all cordially invited. So now I'm delighted to introduce our speaker tonight, who first met the Dockerels in the late 1980s when they visited Harvard. He greatly enjoyed conversations with them, and he collaborated with them on many occasions through their shared interests in post-war US foreign policy. He has described Sackie as a thoughtful and highly productive scholar and a gem of a human being, which I think says it all. Our speaker is the distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Political Science and European Studies at Vanderbilt University. He's the recipient of a long list of awards and fellowships and a former president of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, and he has also served on the Historical Advisory Committee of the Department of State. He's the author of many important works on the relationship between Europe and the United States in the post-war years, including his most recent work, Henry Kissinger and American Power, a political biography. And it is Henry Kissinger who forms the focus of his lecture tonight entitled, Achievements, Failures or Crimes, the Kissinger Legacy in American Foreign Policy. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Professor Thomas A. Schwartz. It really is quite an honor to be able to give the doctoral, memorial lecture. Sackie and I met, as Neil mentioned, when we both had just about finished our PhDs and had the opportunity then to be doing work on NATO, post-war, rearmament, all of these issues. And I certainly, I mourn her absence and her and Michael's absence. They were wonderful people. I want to talk tonight about this man, Henry Kissinger. This is his formal State Department portrait. And I had an alternate title, which is something of an inside joke. You have to know something of 1970s popular culture. But everything you wanted to know about Henry Kissinger, but we're afraid to ask, there was a very popular book in the 1970s when Kissinger was at his height called Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex and we're afraid to ask. And Henry was part of that era and it raises the question and this is the question I was always asked as I was working on it. Why another book on Kissinger? And certainly this is a challenge. Neil Ferguson, who many of you, who's worked many of you I'm sure know, has come out with the first volume of his study of Kissinger in which he tries to see Henry Kissinger as an idealist. Greg Grandin from a very, very different perspective essentially blames Henry Kissinger for everything that's gone wrong in American foreign policy since the 1950s. And Bob Brigham, someone else I know did a recent book on Kissinger in Vietnam called Reckless, which also sort of centered on Kissinger's failings. There are more favorable books, one by Martin Indyk that just came out called Master of the Game on Henry Kissinger in Middle East Diplomacy. This is a fascinating book because Indyk himself was involved heavily in Middle East Diplomacy and so he brings to his study of Kissinger a sense of what the realities of the Middle East are like and what Kissinger had to deal with. In that sense it's a combination of both history and to a certain extent biography and other aspects of the study. Three other books that came out at the same time of mine, The Inevitability of Tragedy by Barry Gouin, who is a editor at the New York Times Book Review, is quite sympathetic to Kissinger. Stephen Rabe's Kissinger in Latin America is quite condemnatory of Kissinger as is Bernd Greiner's Henry Kissinger biography that was written in German. My book is essentially a type of history through biography, Henry Kissinger and American Power. There was a sort of origin story that I like to tell, which is that I had done an article for a journal. The editor liked it and said there was this new series of books that Helen Lynn were doing where they were going to try to teach larger concepts of American history through biography. Biography is a much more accessible way of conveying some important lessons. They wanted someone to do something on U.S. foreign policy of the 20th century. I wrote up a prospectus, I asked around my advisors and the rest, most of which did not want me to do Henry Kissinger. I kept coming back to Kissinger as the one of the few lives that could get at so many of the issues of American foreign relations. And ultimately it took me far longer than I expected, but I did and it was much less of a short book than was also the intention. But I feel like that was the driving force was to try to deal with that. I tell a story at the beginning of the book that when I first met Kissinger in connection with the book, he asked me what I was doing and I told him I was trying to write a short book that would connect his life with American diplomacy and he said to me, but you will leave things out. And I did have to leave things out but not as much as I thought. It turned out to be much longer. It is extremely hard and in my book there are a number of points which I actually do say this, to make an overall assessment of Henry Kissinger today, where at least I found it difficult at times especially with my colleagues. He is viewed on the left of the political spectrum in America with intense hostility. Bernie Sanders, who I am sure many of you know, in the 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton called him the most destructive secretary of state in U.S. history. And while I think that might appeal to Kissinger's desire to be number one, it is not exactly what he wants to be remembered for. There is an enormous amount of hostility toward Kissinger on Twitter. I don't tweet but my daughters do and they tell me when Kissinger's brother died this past year there were all these hashtags the wrong Kissinger, the wrong Kissinger. So that type of hostility and there is also an intense hostility among many academics toward him as a figure who they see as the epitome of power arrogance and often crimes. I in the end took an approach that was fundamentally focused on the time Kissinger spent in government assessing what he did in power versus his role after 1977. I acknowledge and have a chapter at the end of the book on his role since he was in power. And it's actually fascinating to think that it's been more than 40 years since Henry Kissinger had a position of great authority and he has still played an extraordinary role during this time but the full documentation and understanding of that role is something that will only come much later than most of us here will realize given the nature of the time period and Henry Kissinger's own longevity. In fact Kissinger's full papers won't become available until five years after his death and he is 98 and still going. So this is just the table of contents gives you some idea of what I did in the book as I said the focus was on Kissinger's time in government. Some of the sources I used were the Kissinger papers, the memoirs and writings which are available in part, Nixon library materials and other assorted collections. The two that most fascinated me though and probably caused me to take way longer on this study than anyone should ever do was the Nixon tapes which have now become more mostly fully available. Most of you, although some of the younger people here might not know this, but Richard Nixon recorded his conversations and almost everything else that went on at the White House from February of 1971 to July of 1973. Because he did that, no successor to him has even gone near tape recordings. It was not perhaps as wise as Nixon thought. Nixon thought he was creating a historical record. It did end up hoisting him by his own batard on that scale. But the tapes are an absolutely fascinating and provide an insight and I brought them along a little bit tonight to just give you a little bit of a taste of that. And the third source here is something that is at my home university is namely the archive of the Vanderbilt, the television news archive. Vanderbilt has been recording the evening news in America since 1968 and particularly in the early period of the evening news and I would say probably from about 1968 through around 1990, most Americans got their news and their presentation of reality from television. And this was quite crucial. And especially during this period, television news was largely the most trusted source. And so the manner in which Kissinger emerged on television news and the manner in which he came to be seen as essentially directing American foreign policy is I think an important source and I've tried to bring along some of that tonight too. My central argument in the book and the reason I make an argument that there is something new to be said about Henry Kissinger, which is not always easy, was that Kissinger was indeed, while he was a foreign policy intellectual and advocate of realpolitik, the pursuit of a pragmatic and realistic foreign policy that promoted American security and the national interest, interest defined fairly narrowly in military and economic terms, and largely downplaying moral and ethical considerations like human rights. This is not the wrong picture of Henry Kissinger, but it is very incomplete. And I argue for the centrality of politics, Kissinger is a political actor. His self-presentation was as an independent and nonpartisan expert on foreign policy, but he always recognized the centrality of politics and how deeply intertwined domestic and foreign politics were within the American system. Kissinger's skill with the media also enhanced his authority and symbol of foreign policy during the Nixon and Ford years. Some people of the time actually recognize this, one, the French foreign minister, Michel Jaubert, who commented on Kissinger's taste for stardom, but that he was interested in politics, that he was a politician above all else, and calculated like one. Robert Hartman, who worked for Gerald Ford, also talked about his skill as a politician and argued that he was as good as one as all but a formidable few, Churchill, Roosevelt, Joe and Lai, Goldemir and Nixon. And I think this sense that Kissinger's political concepts were important is the area I think I make an original contribution. And I think this contribution largely comes from the presence of the Nixon tapes because they give us an idea of how foreign policy issues were truly discussed. I'll just give a preview now for those of you who might find this talk a little lengthy. So if I lose you, you'll at least have heard what my main judgments are. I do think Henry Kissinger was extraordinarily consequential. The opening to China, the Toth with the Soviet Union, this role in the Middle East and even the reversal of U.S. African policy. He also made mistakes. Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, India and Pakistan, East Timor, but I think many of these mistakes need to be understood in terms of what could be realistically done or what control actually Kissinger had. I'm reluctant to go into the area of crimes. I think it's a description that stem more from Kissinger's own personalization of policy and media celebrity than from his real responsibility for these actions. So in that sense I think one can reach a balanced view of Henry Kissinger without believing that he needs to be facing an international court of justice in the manner in which Christopher Hitchens, the most prominent figure in this regard, made. For many of you who are not familiar with the Kissinger story, he grew up in Nazi Germany, born in 1923. This is a picture of him and his brother and their mother there. He was affected by his German experience, but often discounted it and emphasized it was not central to understanding who he was. He was quite careful on this during his time in power and also often very sensitive to arguments that he had in some sense been scarred emotionally by his experiences in Nazi Germany. He did escape from Nazi Germany. His mother, I shouldn't say I mean they left, had American sponsors and left in 1938 before the worst of the pogroms began in Kristallnacht in November of that year. One of the great sort of stories about Henry Kissinger is the fact that here he is leaving Germany as in effect a refugee, an exile, and yet going back as a conqueror a few years later in the uniform of the U.S. Army. He served in Army Intelligence. His knowledge of German and Germany made him particularly noteworthy. It's also one of these things, service in the military in this context was a spring of great social mobility to millions of Americans. And with no American was it more so than with Henry Kissinger, who probably would have ended up an accountant in New York City had not World War II intervened. Instead he of course would be with the American Army. He would liberate a concentration camp in 1945 and then he would serve as an administrator of a German city of Krefeld for a year before coming back to the United States. Kissinger's whole sense of ambition transformed itself. He had been at City College in New York, but now one of his mentors Fritz Kramer insisted that he go to Harvard where gentlemen studied. Kissinger was an extraordinary student at Harvard, writing one of the longest undergraduate theses that ever was seen at Harvard, some 300 plus pages. It's one of the few Kissinger manuscripts that's not published. It led to the Kissinger rule at Harvard that no undergraduate theses could be longer than 100 pages, which was still in effect when I was there. That was one of the rules that was called the Kissinger rule. While a graduate student at Harvard he created an academic journal that networked and allowed for the international exchange of ideas. He also developed an international seminar that brought Europeans to the United States and then later Africans Latin Americans and Asians as well for discussions on American politics. Kissinger actually a number of his former students ultimately had quite prominent roles in places around the world later and he would interact with them. He became an advisor to Nelson Rockefeller who was the liberal Republican when there were liberal Republicans and he was governor of New York and many people thought he would become president. Kissinger became his advisor and was linked to him from a very early time and I think he got an instruction in politics in some ways from his time with Rockefeller. In 1958 Kissinger was one of the first defense intellectuals in the United States to write a best seller in this sense nuclear weapons and foreign policy in which Kissinger actually argued on the need for the United States to develop a capacity for limited nuclear war. It's actually remarkable to think about it now as being seen by many in the establishment is absolutely essential. I just want to show you a bit of Kissinger here in particular I wanted to show the and just keeping in mind that this is from 1958 and this is Henry Kissinger's first television interview. C-SPAN proudly true to our mission for 40 plus years. In 1958 Henry appeared on a program called the Mike Wallace interview. Mr. Wallace questioned Mr. Kissinger about relations between the United States and Soviet Union, the concept of limited war and how to prevent a nuclear war. It's just under 30 minutes. This is Professor Henry Kissinger, a military and political analyst for the revolutionary concept of nuclear war and the constructive concept for peace. He's a man whose ideas have prompted the highest officials of our to reevaluate our defense policies. We'll get his criticisms of our current strategies in war and peace in just a moment. He's going to have to help me. The Mike Wallace interview presented by the America Broadcasting Company and Association with the Fund for the Republic is going to have to help me come and get back here. Discussing the problems of survival and freedom in America. Good evening. I'm Mike Wallace. Tonight we'll tackle the immediate issue that will decide the fate of our freedom certainly and possibly even of our survival. We'll discuss the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union and the chances of war. Our guests. I wanted to, I knew something would go wrong. I was hoping to be able to click on a particular comment that Kissinger made during the interview in which he talked about himself as a non-partisan and someone who was independent of any political affiliation. And this was something Kissinger cultivated almost throughout his career even when he became much more partisan and identified particularly with the Republican Party for a time in their foreign policy with Richard Nixon. Even at this time when he was working with Rockefeller he tried to do this. But Kissinger also maintained links on both sides of the political spectrum. His particular Kissinger in 1960s went to Washington briefly with the Kennedy Administration advising on Germany despite his continuing ties to Rockefeller. But he was mistrusted by a number of people within the Kennedy Administration and not given a great deal to do. He would come back in the Johnson Administration and he would actually get his first experience with trying to conduct secret negotiations which he tried to set up in Paris in 1967 and he was involved in particular one of the secret negotiation efforts called Pennsylvania then. He developed ties to both Republicans and Democrats and in the 1968 election Kissinger worked for Rockefeller and was disappointed when he was defeated by Richard Nixon and the Republican primaries but he stayed involved with the Paris negotiations and he warned Nixon that there would be a bombing halt. In fact Dixon would then later tell the South Vietnamese not to come to the negotiating table something that President Johnson thought was treason. In fact of course I think the South Vietnamese wouldn't have come anyway since they were worried about being sold out by the administration. This is something though of one of the early criticisms of Kissinger was that he played both sides of the fence and this is both a criticism but it also gives you some understanding of how his own prestige was such that he could interact with both Republicans and Democrats so much so that Hubert Humphrey who lost Richard Nixon in 1968 would later say that he would have appointed Kissinger as National Security Advisor just as Nixon had. This is Nixon and Kissinger in the television news. I'm not sure what's going to happen here if this will come up. I wanted to show you just his introduction in the Vanderbilt TV if this may. Let's see if what happens here. $50. President elect Nixon today named Dr. Henry Kissinger the German born Harvard professor as his White House policy advisor on defense and foreign affairs. In the planning of foreign policy Nixon said he intends to seek the advice of experts in allied nations. Dan rather reports. Kissinger long has argued that the U.S. must use its power more subtly. He is more expert about Europe than Asia believes the military solution is possible in Vietnam but opposes a unilateral pullout. He was asked about reports that he is a hardliner on Vietnam. I have been expressing my views publicly on international affairs for the last 15 years and I have tried to avoid labels like heart and sauce and express my best judgment on the substance. Therefore I find it very difficult to characterize myself. As for the idea of actively soliciting the advice of private foreigners Kissinger named Alistair Buckin of London's Institute for Strategic Studies as an example. Mr. Nixon was asked if all this might not be resetted in his State Department. Of course the Secretary of State is the Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the United States. As far as the government is concerned generally there must be the very closest relationship between the Secretary of State and the White House staff. Dr. Kissinger is keenly aware of the necessity not to set himself up as a wall between the President and the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense. One time Whittier College and Mr. Nixon took time out to greet all American footballers. Ohio State's Dave Foray, George's Bill Stanfield, Notre Dame's Terry Hanratty and Southern Cal's O.J. Simpson. Tomorrow Mr. Nixon is expected to name as his science advisor Lee DuBridge, President of California Institute of Technology. You do find funny things in the television archive. References like that to someone who becomes famous much later and all of that. That clip always fascinates me because of a number of things. One is seeing Kissinger on camera that early, recognizing some of the limits. But also seeing in a way how he was playing this avoiding attempts to define me. Also hearing Richard Nixon say that he was not going to set up a wall between Kissinger and the Secretary of State and knowing, of course, that full blast, that's what he was going to do. That Kissinger was in effect brought into the administration to bring foreign policy into the White House and to effectively exclude the State Department from the most important decisions because Nixon wanted to use foreign policy, both because of his own belief in the importance of it, but also for political reasons. He wanted the credit for foreign policy achievements to go to him not to the Secretary of State or to the State Department. And this was an important part of Kissinger's role as national security advisor. It was in effect creating, bringing foreign policy under the control and domination of the White House both to allow for speed and secrecy in the carrying out of foreign policy. The first two years of the Nixon administration were not terribly successful. Vietnam was not ended as quickly as Nixon hoped. Nixon hoped to get the Soviet Union to intervene. He hoped to get, convince the Vietnamese that he was willing to use force only to find that this divided his cabinet and the scale of the anti-war movement in the United States made them fearful of a terrible domestic unrest. He had relatively little progress with Russia and China during this period. The Nixon doctrine he did proclaim about the retrenchment of U.S. power, the administration failed in Chile to prevent the election of Salvador Allende. They had some success in the Middle East but Kissinger himself, called up by a reporter about the Middle East situation, began the statement in his classic sort of humor saying, well you can't lose them all. And that I think was a reference to some of the difficulties the administration had. Kissinger from the very beginning though crafted an image with the media. He was on the cover of Time Magazine within a month of the beginning of the administration and that would become a frequent area. And this was a period of time and I feel like I should say this now. When magazines like Time and Newsweek really set the agenda in the United States in ways that it does not exist now, what you're continually aware of is how different the media environment was then, both in terms of the dominance of national news but also of certain magazines and key newspapers in setting the agenda for the country. Kissinger also developed the secret swinger. This is one of the more bizarre aspects of his career which was this dating beautiful women and being sort of in the fashion pages and the society pages at first of the Washington Post but as his prominence grew also in other major news magazines. So the idea that Kissinger was this ladies' man and was the most colorful figure and the Nixon administration quickly emerged. The Republicans suffered deep losses though in 1970 and even though they gained a couple of seats at the Senate their margin in the House failed and Nixon thought he might be a one-term president and he considered, he wanted, he talked to his advisors about the need to highlight Kissinger who he thought could be a key figure in making the administration more politically strong because of the media favoritism that had already become clear in the way in which so many journalists regarded Kissinger. Kissinger resigned from Harvard. There is a news clip I have of this. I'm going to skip this one just to allow me to move a little faster. Kissinger, Nixon in early 1971 engineered the invasion of Laos which was a complete military failure of military failure and intelligence but Nixon gave a speech in which he made the case that this was an enormous success and he tried to argue that this would allow him to continue vietnamization. Kissinger immediately called him at the end of the speech and this is one of the things you do get from the opportunity of the tapes. The president, this was the best speech you've delivered I think November 3rd was better but we will never have a moment like that again. Well the November 3rd speech was not well delivered this one was really moving a little and I don't know whether you saw the commentary. I don't care what the bastards say. First of all no one was fly-specking it. The Chancellor was very favorable everyone is saying a strong man sticking to his guns, carrying out his policy not being driven off, Dan rather, very positive, Marvin Kalk very positive. The only guy who was fly-specking it a little bit is the Pentagon correspondent who had been... How about Howard Smith? What did he do? He would not. I think that isn't the end. I think this little speech was a work of art. I know a little something about speech writing and by the time we got it down on that little conclusion I think that was done. It was no act because no one could do it. It was the best way to deliver it. I don't know if you've ever done it. Did that come across to me? No. The conversation goes on. What's fascinating in that of course is that Nixon doesn't want to know what the bastards say about him but he wants Kissinger to tell him what the bastards say about him. This was part of the one in which Kissinger continually flattered the president and would argue in his memoirs that this was necessary because of Nixon's deep insecurities. You hear some of that in this speech although Kissinger also says you didn't do a good job on that one but this was the best. This particular comment would go on and you'd see Nixon's anger toward his cabinet and other people who did not call him up after the speech the way Kissinger did. So Kissinger in some ways insinuated himself with Nixon through some sort of excessive flattery and the rest. One of the things I argue in the book is that Kissinger is very much Nixon's creation and he will give to Kissinger a scale of authority that will make Kissinger and allow for Kissinger to out-survive Nixon which is fascinating. I had another one here. What was clear in this conversation particularly was that Kissinger and Nixon followed and were quite attentive to what television was saying about them, what was being commented on and they were enormously impressed with the coverage of the print-pond diplomacy in the beginnings of the China opening which they saw as an enormous possibility for that. In fact, Kissinger and Nixon, and I would argue this in my book that as much as there were geopolitical realities involved with the opening to China, there were also American domestic political realities. In effect, Nixon stole an issue from the Democrats who wanted, who were pushing for the opening to China, but he stole it in such a way that it captivated the American people and the China opening was an extraordinarily popular thing at the time. This has gotten a little obscured recently because there's been an attempt by some people to revise history on this because of China's increasing prominence and some of the fears about China. But the opening to China in 1971 was thought of as an enormous stroke of genius and it sent Nixon higher in the polls and it also led to Kissinger being seen as a crucial part of the teamwork. Not long after the China issue was developed, Kissinger ended up on the cover of both magazines in 1972 when Nixon announced that he had been having secret talks with the North Vietnamese. The announcement of this was also designed for political reasons because the Democrats were criticizing Nixon for not offering the North Vietnamese things that Kissinger had been offering in the secret talks. And in a way this was Nixon's response to it, but it also highlighted Kissinger's role. I have a TV clip which I'm going to skip here again in the interest of time, but in it Kissinger's role is highlighted again by CBS News and Walter Cronkite which was the major news source and Kissinger was also seen speaking but you could not hear his voice because the Nixon administration until late in its first term thought that Kissinger sounded too much like Dr. Strangelove and that having him speak audibly was actually a dangerous thing and might lead people to think that somehow he had this power. As they would have said it didn't play in Peoria. What I argue in the book is that in effect the successful trip to China, 1972 was the political year for Nixon and the successful trip to China which was choreographed for television news. We actually have this, you could see how much the Nixon administration emphasized making sure there were events for the morning news and for the evening news all around the television coverage of it, but also that it got enormous sway so much so that Gallup did a poll shortly after Nixon's trip which found that more than 90, I think it said 98% of Americans it might have been 95, but to have that many Americans aware of any event at any particular time is extraordinary. Most Americans usually tune off politics and the rest, but the Nixon trip to China got enormous attention and it was central to the politics of 1972. Nixon also had his successful trip to the Soviet Union despite the fact that he engaged in more bombing of North Vietnam in response to the North Vietnamese Easter offensive which attempted to topple the South Vietnamese government and then in October Kissinger was able to appear for the first time on camera and audibly announcing the pieces at hand at a press conference on October 26th 1972 in which Kissinger would make this announcement that even though of course at the time they did not yet have the South Vietnamese agreement to go along with the concessions they had made I will play this because it gives you some idea of how central even in foreign policy issues immediately the question went to domestic politics. I understand that the all the free news shows were about the Vietnam that I wonder why. Both in close play and he thinks that can I just mention I just said that based on the progress that has been made to date I can say with confidence tonight that I believe we will achieve our goals just like that a piece with honor and not a surrender that's all I said Again the idea even though of course the peace settlement was also something they sought for geopolitical reasons the timing was carefully time to American politics and getting the credit for that time magazine made the two men men of the year before they went to person of the year they were men of the year at the time this irritated Nixon to no end Nixon was really quite angry that he had to share credit with Kissinger but in effect he had actually made Kissinger into this sort of central figure so much so of course that year later when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded it was given to Kissinger and lay duck toe not to Nixon and this was something that deeply irritated Nixon I'm going to skip this particular Nixon reaction it's pretty foul mouth but it gets into his anger about how Kissinger was in fact being presented the peace treaty of course would take more than three months still to work out there would be the Christmas bombing which elicited outrage from around the world but Kissinger still received credit when the signing of the treaty took place this is him in January 1973 now this has led many historians to argue that effectively what Nixon administration was doing was simply creating the opportunity for a decent interval between the end of the war and the end of South Vietnam I had the opportunity and I think this one I will try to play bring it so I can see it this is Kissinger appearing at a State Department conference in 2010 on the announcement of the last of the documents were declassified from the Vietnam war the volume is not good on this I'm afraid okay I'll skip this for the timing what actually happened was I was able to ask him the question and Kissinger responded and probably the closest recognition of this that indeed while they did tell foreign powers that they recognized that the South Vietnam might not survive it that they were getting out they needed to get out with some degree of honor for the United States preserve they still hoped that they might be able to keep a government there but that they recognized that it could not be sustained indefinitely technology no problem I always expect this and I have added a lot of this because I sometimes think that this does help keep people's attention you're not just hearing my voice you hear Henry you hear Richard Nixon you hear Walter Cronkite but sometimes it becomes very difficult to do this subsequent to this the peace treaty was of course Watergate and the collapse of Nixon's authority in my book I argue in effect that during this period Henry Kissinger became all but president named for foreign policy he directed American foreign policy enjoyed this type of media coverage particularly from time but also Newsweek and others and he redirected his efforts into the Middle East I think gives you some idea of why that is seen as far more lasting a part of Kissinger's legacy than other aspects particularly Vietnam was Kissinger crafted the ceasefire that ended the Yom Kippur war of October of 1973 he received enormously favorable coverage of his efforts as a peacemaker during this time and this was the same time as Nixon fired Archibald Cox and was the first demands for the impeachment of Nixon were coming so there was this sort of bifurcation of Nixon's collapsing authority with Kissinger's growing authority in the public Kissinger then negotiated disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Syria the particular one that I won't show right now about Syria had John Chancellor announcing on NBC News that Henry Kissinger did it that was the beginning of his framing of it in June of 1974 Kissinger ultimately established the United States as the honest broker for Middle East peace he pushed the Soviet Union out of its realm as a power particularly by switching Egypt from a Soviet ally to an American ally and in effect he set American policy for decades in the Middle East and this was quite strongly suggested the Newsweek Superman bit gives you some idea of how that looked the Mideast miracle also in the midst of all of this when Americans were paying close attention to the Middle East because of of course increasing oil prices something that one sees to this day Nixon resigned in August of 1974 and this began a period of time in which Henry Kissinger now became the target of critics Kissinger had enjoyed a certain immunity during the period of Watergate and when Kissinger threatened to resign at one point during Watergate everyone said no no no don't resign we can't afford to lose you sort of setting the stage for the fact that people did feel Nixon could resign and he did Gerald Ford comes into office and when asked about his foreign policy he says well Henry will take care of that and Kissinger is in effect that continues to have dominant influence on foreign policy but he's considerably by the Democratic Congress of 1974 there's also growing opposition to detente among conservatives especially on the Reagan wing of the Republican Party liberals challenged the morality of policies toward dictatorships like Chile, Brazil and Argentina and then there's the collapse in Vietnam in April of 75 Kissinger comes under extraordinary and quite strong attack during this time there is this TV report that we will try to show just because of what it captures I think We'll have more from Jakarta later Although this has been a working trip for Secretary of State Kissinger perhaps it seems more like a vacation to him or in some respects Kissinger now appears to be more popular abroad than he is at home. Mary Dunn's Moore explains the conclusion of the Israeli-Israeli Disengagement Agreement in June 74 Kissinger was at the height of his career and Newsweek made him the ultimate pop hero. The same magazine this week is hinting of his demise. This week Kissinger has been in China. Chairman Mao gave him the warmest greeting. The Chinese like him. The Russians respect him. The Egyptians and Israelis will only deal through him but here in Washington it's been another week of Kissinger under attack Yesterday the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report on the 1973 coup in Chile. While not finding the CIA specifically involved the report talks of a policy which quote created the atmosphere on quote for Allende's removal. Henry Kissinger directed that policy. Earlier this week former chief of naval operations Admiral Zumwalt was before the House Committee claiming Kissinger was high Thank you. The report goes on and makes the point that Kissinger might be threatened in his stature. Of course that didn't happen. Kissinger remained. He was so vital to Gerald Ford that despite the fact there was a critique from the left by Jimmy Carter which stressed the need for a more Wilsonian and idealistic American foreign policy. A critique from the right by Scoop Jackson Democrats, conservative Democrats and Ronald Reagan Republicans and the influence of Congress. Kissinger's realism was under attack by all of these Kissinger gave a series of speeches in which he tried to essentially make the case for his approach as something like the Goldilocks of foreign policy between the isolationist attitudes of many Americans and the sort of idealistic Kennedy type approach of foreign policy. And even though and this is one of the things I try to correct in my book there is the argument that somehow he was repudiated in 1976. Kissinger never lost the support of a majority of the American people for the type of foreign policy he was engaged in. I could say a lot about Kissinger in retirement and perhaps that will come up in the Q&A. Kissinger remained a powerful figure. During the Carter administration he was effectively shadow secretary of state. I used the British term in that sense that he was really seen as having that much authority. He was though beginning to be attacked particularly the British journalist William Shawcross in his book on Cambodia attacked Kissinger as did in a fictional account. During the Reagan years Kissinger would be an advisor an informal advisor on the Soviet Union in the Middle East and chair of the Central American Commission. But because right wing Republicans suspected his detente policy he never had a formal position within the administration. His protégés would influence George H.W. Bush Brunsko-Croft and Lawrence Eagleburger who had worked closely with him and he would speak to George H.W. Bush. But George H.W. Bush actually did not particularly care for Kissinger and kept him at a bit of a distance. He was an occasional advisor to Clinton, to Bush II and to Obama. There was the publication of Hitchens trial of Henry Kissinger and the increasing controversies about some of his decisions of the past. He was initially appointed to head up the 9-11 commission by Bush but resigned quickly when it was clear that he would have to reveal the clients of his international consulting business and he did not want to do that. He became very wealthy as an international consultant. He has continued to write books. His book on China is a particularly interesting account of and his own thinking about Chinese development. His book on world order and then this past month he released a book co-authored with two other authors on artificial intelligence's implications. So he's still going. He did try to create a softer image with a number of ads in the 2000s. One had him in Yankee Stadium. Another had him on a plane reading The Economist. The Economist had him as a figure there. Let me try to assess. I've gone over already and I clearly can do this and I can talk about Kissinger forever. I think one of the central things and this is one of the points I make in the book is the what Kissinger's career illuminates is this connection between domestic and foreign policy in the United States that does create a challenge for anyone in a field of policymaking. Kissinger actually had relative success at this balance for a time and he and Nixon were able to craft a foreign policy that won popular approval and that also contributed both I think to a certain geopolitical stability as well as to his electoral success in 1972. I argue though that Kissinger was more of a tactician than a strategist. This is probably something that does not appeal to his own sense of himself. I think it's closer to reality that he was able to react to crises better than he was in a sense to design things particularly on the Middle East for example. Kissinger once told a group of Foreign Service Officers in 1977 when you are in these positions you can't really reflect about their meaning because as you rise through the policy process your actions become really more and more like those of an athlete you have to react almost instinctively and have to worry about the significance of what you've done later. And Kissinger in a sense I think did come to react and reflect on the significance of what he had done but in many senses many of these decisions were quite tactical rather than I think embracing a larger strategy. Kissinger did come by the end of the time he was in office to recognizing the limits of American power but at the same time he also contradicted that and I mentioned I write this in my book that ironically enough Kissinger's lamentations about American foreign policy and his critique of exceptionalism were undermined by his own position and actions of Secretary of State. His phenomenal assent as an immigrant and Jewish refugee to the heights of power seemed as much a testament to American exceptionalism as a criticism of it. Kissinger's willingness to advise presidents to use American power abundantly from bombing in Vietnam and inviating in the Middle East and playing off the Soviet Union and China hardly seemed to call for its limitation. As the British at best, Peter Ramsbott observed in 1976 Kissinger's Spenglerian pessimism about the decline of the West and the congressional restraints he faced coexisted with his continuing search for new areas like sub-Saharan Africa to exercise American power. Just as Kissinger could dismiss his personal diplomacy except when he himself was at the center of it so too did his lectures about foreign policy and the limits of power seem contradicted by his own career and behavior. I stress also in the book Kissinger's personalization of foreign policy his emphasis on how diplomatic and political issues related to him personally and I think it's one of the more revealing aspects in studying his behavior in office. As much as the theorist Kissinger stressed the role of impersonal national interests in determining the foreign policies of state, Kissinger the policymaker saw issues through a personal lens. To the Chinese he was the symbol of their new relationship with the United States. To the Russians he was their ally against the nefarious Henry Jackson and critics of Detente. To the Chilean and Argentinian dictators he would hold off the congressional liberals and their human rights demands and to the Israelis and the Arabs as a honest broker even as he told each how much he sympathized with their claims. It's interesting, it's a British analysis that I found that in some ways provoked this in the foreign office records. They were meeting, Kissinger was coming to Britain in March of 1974 for a meeting and in this analysis it mentioned, despite his high intelligence and his conceptual approach to foreign policy, by no means do all Kissinger's actions form part of a coherent master plan in promoting the United States' political advantage. Mood, emotion and the circumstances of his own background he is the first immigrant to ever become US Secretary of State in his very conscious of the dignity of his office are powerful conditioning figures. They on occasion lead him to personalize his dealings with foreign countries and to inflate specific issues into the touchstone of relations with them. Along with all of this I would also argue that Kissinger's skill in dealing with the media is something also that's really clear from understanding. He spent an enormous amount of time briefing journalists, making sure talking to columnists, making sure that the policies was explained being the background source and this occupied a large part of his time and it's actually quite extraordinary to see how much time was spent on the media aspect of his role. Kissinger's also something of an unapologetic cold warrior. Many of you might be aware of Robert McNamara who repented on Vietnam. Kissinger has never repented and in fact in the picture that you briefly saw of Kissinger and at the State Department it was a picture that I never thought I'd see it was Kissinger in front of the flag of the United States and the flag of the Communist dictatorship in Vietnam and even in that particular context Kissinger still regretted the fact that the Communist one and believed that the United States should have done more to preserve South Vietnam. So I think this is one of the reasons why he is particularly seen by many as a target of things and in many ways many of his policy choices were not unlike that of his predecessors or successors and they reflected I think the dilemmas of any great power but because Kissinger has so personalized the foreign policy process he has attracted I think a great deal of the venom and hatred toward some of those decisions. I'm going to close here the way I closed in my book. Henry Kissinger was and is a complicated man. Brilliant, devious, suspicious, arrogant, insecure, obsequious, paranoid, thoughtful, tenacious, domineering, vulnerable, direct, deceptive, insensitive, eloquent, petty, turgid, witty, thin skin. In short the polytropus which Hans Morgenthau recognized when Kissinger was at the height of his world fame. Kissinger is also I think a truly significant historical figure and symbol of America's international power. A man who played a critical role in American foreign policy during a transitional era and whose long life after his government service have allowed him to shape both the understanding of that era on America's subsequent history. Henry Kissinger both exercised 20th century American power, leaving a legacy which 21st century Americans will debate for many years to come. Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed. I'm a former UK low enforcement intelligence analyst who had responsibility for covering X of its status, low enforcement, not agency work. You mentioned how the difficult first few years of the Nixon administration in the low point in 71. How much of the breakthrough was due to issues which meant the Chinese and the Soviet Union were willing to talk. I can't help wonder if low pre-1973 oil prices had an impact in the Soviet Union. But also of course the issue of the mooted 1969 nuclear attack by them on China. Was it a coming together of events? Two sides. America had a chance and the others had a chance. I do think that when you look at it chronologically you do recognize that the Nixon administration planted seeds for the types of policies it hoped would come. Nixon within the first week that he was president made it clear that he was interested in some change in China policy. Kissinger though I mentioned in the book would frequently say that he thought his boss was sort of day dreaming on that one that it wasn't likely to come. And I give much more credit to Nixon on the China initiative than I do to Kissinger at least initially. But the mooted nuclear attack for one certainly got their attention. And it did let them to recognize that both the Soviet Union and China now there was a possibility of playing them off against each other but it had to be very carefully done. And I think the Soviets for example kept refusing Nixon's efforts at a summit during 1970. Nixon wanted a summit to help with the political midterm elections and he could not get one. And I think in a way they laid the groundwork for it but the timing and the rest came off really quite extraordinary for them in 71. But luck does require you to have some preparation and they had done the preparation and they got a series of incredible breaks particularly the opening to China and then the degree to which this distressed the Soviet so much that they quickly agreed to the summit. And really Nixon and Kissinger did have this triangular diplomacy that they had sought or thought they could get early on. Yes sir. I'm a nobody but I just want to ask did he have any affiliation with Edward Lutwag throughout Cutita? I know that he was occasionally sent writings by Lutwag but I think Lutwag occupied a more conservative view on the Cold War than Kissinger. Kissinger did though it's interesting that Kissinger gets material from one of his mentors, Fritz Kramer who was in the Defense Department and who was a much more conservative figure on the Cold War and even criticized things like the opening to China. So Kissinger was at least aware of the development of a sort of right wing opposition that was growing to both the Tant and what was seed as the retrenchment of American power that he would then face when Ronald Reagan would run against Ford in the 1976 primaries. But specifically with Lutwag I think that he did get materials from Kramer about him. Do you think that Kissinger's use of the media was sort of a self-aware attempt to create his own legacy or a sort of legitimate attempt to enact policy in the best way that he could? I'm not sure that those are contradictory. I think they play on in some ways one can enhance the other. He had a real sense though, an early sense of the importance of discussing things with journalists. One of the things that highlights is we do know, for example, very clearly that the Nixon administration was very hostile to the press and to the media. And in fact, Spiro Agnew would attack the very television networks of people that Kissinger was always talking to. So it was a part, it was this odd combination of Kissinger in effect connecting with a lot of the people that Nixon was denouncing and I think in that, it also played to Kissinger's own sense that he could carve out an independent existence from Nixon, even though he was very dependent on Nixon for his power and authority early on. And it gave him that opportunity. His overall legacy, the interesting thing about Kissinger and his legacy is it does draw him into a sort of pessimism. When he's asked these questions about his legacy, he feels like he has not successfully convinced America to have a foreign policy more detached from our political battles. I think he actually, even though he was someone who understood that, he came to feel it was something that he would like to see less of. And in that sense, he has a somewhat pessimistic view sometimes of whether he's had a lasting legacy. Although, I think on China he does see that as part of his legacy and he has been quite outspoken recently in fearing that if tensions develop, you might have a pre-World War I type situation. Hi, thank you. So for the last 12 years, my employer's been the U.S. government, Department of Defense, and work with Department of State. And what I've sort of observed or what I felt I've observed is you have an organization with a lot of capacity, but not really a direction. There's really no overarching strategy. Plenty of power, but not really a rudder. Looking at Henry Kissinger's career, do you see an element, one element, or maybe more than one element of what he brought to the table that might benefit U.S. foreign policy now? I do actually. I do think there were aspects, although not in quite the coherent way in which Kissinger sometimes is portrayed as a sort of Latter-day Metardick or Bismarck. But I do see particularly his understanding of the need to recognize the limits of what can be done. And I have been impressed, particularly at reading the Martin Indic book, that in the Middle East, for example, Kissinger recognized what was likely most crucial to the American government, particularly the removal of Egypt as a source of contention between the parties there, and really removing then the larger threat of war. And creating a type of stability. It wasn't perfect by any means and in fact left lots of problems unresolved, but it did decrease the overall problem of several wars that could have that possibility of superpower confrontation. So I think in some ways it's both recognizing modest achievements for stability are more important perhaps than sweeping peace deals or arrangements that in many ways a more limited diplomacy that focuses on the solution to key problems in an area rather than sort of a larger framework may make more sense. And that's kind of counterintuitive because Kissinger's often seen as having this sort of global vision, global strategy and wanting stability. But I think particularly Indic in this book on the Middle East does argue that he at least in applying to the Middle East to follow the more limited conception of what peace would require. Thank you. In those very early days and Kissinger's secret chip to China, do you think any of the decisions he made still affects the character of the US China relationship today beyond obviously them having a relationship? Well, I do think one of the interesting legacies was of course, and I think one has to see this in the spirit of the time, was of course that Kissinger and Nixon did downplay the importance of Taiwan. They, in 1971 Taiwan was just another dictatorship in Asia and to a certain extent I think both Kissinger and Nixon were not convinced it would survive and become a democratic and prosperous power in the manner in which it has. And to a certain extent Kissinger in the meetings early on in 71 with Joe Enlai did minimize American interest in Taiwan in a way that probably he should have recognized there were certainly strong views on the conservative right about Taiwan, the infamous China lobby, whatever. But there were strong connections to Taiwan that were going to make any sort of change of its status very difficult. And in fact it would be and Congress would react quite strongly when Jimmy Carter did recognize the PRC. So I think there has been at least this idea that the United States commitment to Taiwan is less than solid is certainly there. And I don't blame Kissinger necessarily because I think in 1971 given the sort of situation at the time it wasn't quite clear that it was really necessary to be full full-throated in defense of Taiwan. Whereas now I would think I'd see it somewhat differently. I have two questions and I'm going to ask the difficult one first to make sure I try and get it right. I am James Gower of this parish by the way. And it's in relation to the new material on AI where the position seems to be we've had these things through all of history and all we need to do is get a grip and take the old approaches to the new phenomenon. And I can't put to three of the six points he makes. One is opening lines of communication so going back to Shelling having lines of communication between great powers so they understand what's going on. The second is to is reviewing nuclear weapons arsenals because of this link between the kind of the new stuff and the old stuff and the dangers that are in there. And the third which is perhaps the most challenging that I want to point to but it links to the others is that one of the points of the new stuff is that it's very fast and it's based on deception on secrecy. And yet he seems to advocate for the idea that you slow everything down to make it more transparent. And I just wonder what you make of that and if you think it's even possible to slow things down to make them more transparent given the very nature and purpose is the opposite. The other question goes back to your point about tactical rather than strategic and I guess it turns on the view that you have that Nixon was more important for China than Kissinger. So I'd just maybe like to get you to explain that a bit more because I look at it you mentioned the stuff in 91558. One of the things he really got wrong was tactical nuclear weapons which he later admitted himself and at that point again marketing as the independent specialist but really a protege for the army at that stage promoting ideas. So can you say a bit more about why Nixon not kissing her for China because that seems like a really big strategic move and I would have always thought that that was his initiative. An artificial intelligence I want to probably plead my own technological insufficiency which was fairly evident right here. On the other hand what you said about Kissinger wanting to slow things down does amuse me a little bit because of course his own strategies and secrecy his own connection to that when he was in office was certainly there in the way in which he also liked using the modern conveniences of his time to react and to undertake policies. I honestly my own sense there might be of someone who is 98 years old and seeing maybe we should slow things down that type of thing more than any sound recognition of some of the dangers that AI poses or even whether it's practical whether what he suggests is practical. Again I plead a certain degree of ignorance on this one. On Nixon and China it is known of course that Richard Nixon in 1967 published his famous article in Ford Affairs about Asia after Vietnam and was already then talking about the need to connect with China in some manner. What I meant by certainly it was a strategic move but I think it also was something in which Nixon was aware both of the conflict between China and the Soviet Union but also the degree to which American resistance to communist China or China as a whole had faded considerably from the time in late 1950s when he was such a representative of the China lobby his own personal sort of political antenna I would call it that recognized that a move toward China could hold enormous possibilities in stealing an issue from the Democrats who were already advocating this and had been outspoken on it and at the same time would have enormous popular appeal because remember again that Vietnam was in part fought because of fears of Chinese expansionism and in a way the idea of going to China would undercut of course so much of what had been thought to be central to American policy and what many Americans by 1969 and 70 were tired of and they were tired of the sense of being committed to wars in Asia and this would offer a tremendous political potential and what's fascinating in looking through the materials is how often in the tapes in another context Nixon references the domestic political impact of China and I even make the case in my book that one reason the United States takes a really what I think is a counterproductive position supporting Pakistan in the Pakistan-Indian war is because of fears that it'll lose this connection to China but China becomes sort of central both as a geostrategic move but also as the key political move that Nixon sees that's going to allow him to win the presidency again in 1972 Hi, my name is Wudi and I'd like to ask you in regards to Kissinger's policy with Syria now as we know Americans are at war with the Syrians and pretty much is the same family that used to be in the time of Kissinger in 1974 and basically 70s set foot in Syria trying to negotiate deals and agreements with them so how would you view current situation of the United States and Syria as something like a long-term failure of the strategy of the Kissinger or something that American administrations after Kissinger set foot out of the administration somehow didn't or failed to follow up with whatever he thought should be followed, thank you What's fascinating about this is that of course in certain respects the agreement Kissinger got in 1974 of disengagement has lasted to this day. It still defines in a sense the border region between Israel and Syria. Even within the civil war and all the rest it stayed there Kissinger had some of his conversations with Assad are both fascinating and very funny on one level because I may make the point the book that at one of the key conversations he starts telling Assad about how he's being criticized by all these reporters in America and he mentions a couple of them and some politicians and Assad has no idea who he's talking about and it's clear that this is sort of what Kissinger is indulging in but eventually they did breach this agreement. I don't think Kissinger had any illusions about Assad and it is interesting to me that in a sense that Israel did follow up on this in the later period where they came very close to going to actually giving back the Golan Heights or at least changing the border and Assad would not agree in the sense he wanted every inch and he was quite militant on that. So I'm not sure that I would hold Kissinger as much responsible as I think subsequent administrations didn't realize in a sense of what they were dealing with all the time with Syria and even I think the famous Obama red line issue which Kissinger actually criticized because he said you can't make statements like that and not follow through so I do think this is one of these cases where I don't think Henry Kissinger's ongoing influence was quite as central as in some others. Okay I hope this is a good one If I remember rightly in his memoirs Kissinger kind of skips over the Cyprus dispute claiming that he was too invested with Watergate to really concentrate on what was going on but thinking about it at the same time that Cyprus was going on the Greek dictatorship was falling and another NATO power Turkey invaded Cyprus and before that the government under Makarios had also fallen apart so they struggled to see whether that's the case. What was sort of the U.S. reaction to and sort of Kissinger's personal reaction to what was going on in Cyprus and what was their involvement if any. Well it's fascinating you should ask that. I briefly talk about it in my own book. More in the case that it would become. In a way Kissinger's own success in the Middle East set him up in a situation where other conflicts were seen he has to play a role and in a way I think this was part of the danger of his reputation because almost immediately he became the target of protests in the United States particularly a very strong Greek American lobby that felt he had been overly sympathetic to Turkey. Now by this point Kissinger is concerned about the viability of NATO. He's concerned about two NATO countries going to war. He actually favored some type of partition of Cyprus or he actually didn't favor as much a partition as sort of some degree of ethnic separation that would allow Cyprus to continue to be of some degree of unity. It was one of his former international seminar students though. Am I right? Bullet who was actually stronger then and I think Kissinger was overly sympathetic to the Turkish position on Cyprus and of course this would be the source of one of his first rebukes by Congress which would pass a cutoff of Turkish military aid and so while I'm not sure I completely discount Kissinger's point that he was distracted because in July of 1974 between Watergate Middle East and other things there was a lot on his plate. I do think his own approach to foreign policy and the sense that he had created that he could resolve conflicts played a serious role in some of the criticism he would receive for not intervening earlier and trying to head off the conflict between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus. Thank you. I'd like to give a very sincere and real thanks to the AV-type team who have assisted Thomas so in the evening. I'd like to thank Danny McDivitt for organizing this so efficiently and finally I'd like to thank Thomas again for his fascinating talk. Thank you.