●SPIEGEL Interview with Henry Kissinger: 'Obama Is Like a Che(2)_自考专本|专升本|高升专|高升本|在职研究生-学历教育网

So that from a geostrategic point of view, the Treaty of Versailles met neither the aspirations of the major players nor the strategic possibility of defending what had been created, unless Germany was kept permanently disarmed. It would have been correct to include Germany in the international system but that precisely what the victorious powers omitted to do by demilitarizing and humiliating the country.

SPIEGEL: Despite the failure of Versailles, this Wilsonian idea is remarkably prevalent. Is our affinity to the ideals of democracy perhaps nave?

Map: Europe's borders after 1919 and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

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DER SPIEGEL

Map: Europe's borders after 1919 and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Kissinger: The belief in democracy as a universal remedy regularly reappears in American foreign policy. Its most recent appearance came with the so-called neocons in the Bush administration. Actually, Obama is much closer to a realistic policy on this issue than Bush was.

SPIEGEL: You see Obama as realpolitician?

Kissinger: Let me say a word about realpolitik, just for clarification. I regularly get accused of conducting realpolitik. I don't think I have ever used that term. It is a way by which critics want to label me and say, "Watch him. He's a German really. He doesn't have the American view of things."

SPIEGEL: Then it's a way to cast you as a cynic, isn't it?

Kissinger: Cynics treat values as equivalent and instrumental. Statesmen base practical decisions on moral convictions. It is always easy to divide the world into idealists and power-oriented people. The idealists are presumed to be the noble people, and the power-oriented people are the ones that cause all the world's trouble. But I believe more suffering has been caused by prophets than by statesmen. For me, a sensible definition of realpolitik is to say there are objective circumstances without which foreign policy cannot be conducted. To try to deal with the fate of nations without looking at the circumstances with which they have to deal is escapism. The art of good foreign policy is to understand and to take into consideration the values of a society, to realize them at the outer limit of the possible.

SPIEGEL: What if values cannot be taken into consideration because they are inhuman or too expansive?

Kissinger: In that case, resistance is needed. In Iran, for example, you need to ask the question of whether you have to have a regime change before you can conceive a set of circumstances where each side maintaining its values comes to some understanding.

SPIEGEL: And your answer?

Kissinger: It is too early to say. Right now I have more questions than answers. Will the Iranian people accept the verdict of the religious leaders? Will the religious leaders be united? I don't know the answers, nor does anyone else.

SPIEGEL: You sound very skeptical.

Kissinger: I see two possibilities. We will either come to an understanding with Iran, or we will clash. As a democratic society we cannot justify the clash to our own people unless we can show that we have made a serious effort to avoid it. By that, I don't mean that we have to make every concession they demand, but we are obligated to put forward ideas the American people can support.The upheaval in Teheran must run its course before these possibilities can be explored.

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Part 1: 'Obama Is Like a Chess Player'

Part 2: 'A Unique Chance To Conduct Peaceful American Foreign Policy"

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