Those who tell stories also rule society
Plato
These past couple of weeks have been difficult ones, eh? I've started countless diaries, only to end after a paragraph or two. I have been feckless to whatever the crisis of the day has been for me.
If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
Henry Kissinger
more citings of Henry, mostly italicized and below the fold...
One diary was a drunken one. Now that might have been a good one. Drunk, I fancy myself as articulate or more so than when I am sober. The title of that diary was,
"Diamond Knot Ale and the state of the world".
Kinda like gives you a clue as to where it's been and where it was going (not good). Here I render a semi-cogent quote as a sample:
"I don't drink as a matter of course. I like to think it's forced on me from social circumstances. I know too much about drinking, not in the way of one who drinks, but in the way of one who's been around alcoholics. I know that it causes your mind to change course in the middle of what you think is a brilliant thought and it walks that thought right into mediocrity. Let's call this my drunken diary."
That diary will have to wait for another day and another pale ale and, even then, it will not see the light on the internet, I think.
Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
Feckless, as in "Lacking purpose or vitality; feeble or ineffective." It has the ring of a curse word, but it is truly a feckless word. "Feckless" sounds like it should be describing something weak and ineffectual in a derisive way and it does, almost, but not quite. A failing word to describe a failed state of being.
I'll use it anyway. I am a feckless soul, careless with myself and others, casual with the future, so intent on the present. It's a curse and a blessing, this type of reckless oblivion of the mind. I can achieve a subliminal disengagement in depression that allows me a kind of euphoria. Then I remember. I remember that I remember.
Henry Kissinger was on the Charlie Rose show on August 2. I remember many years ago in college, I had written a bit of a thesis on Kissinger diplomacy. So much time has passed since then, but he is still around. I find that I've lost many years of keeping track of what he has done or said - except for bits that float to the surface of the media, appointments granted and then withheld, interviews and appearances, etc.
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
I'll make no claims to absolute certainty as regards Henry. I do believe he is a grandmaster of diplomacy, no matter what you may think of his missions or his politics, his masters or his own aggrandizement. Nuance, true and artful nuance, flows like wine out of a tipped bottle from Kissinger's brain. There were missteps made, some outright evil ploys, mistakes sometimes due to the confluence of events or unexpected actions by the actors of the time that put a lie to many of the policy manuevers he performed. Vietnam, of course. Latin America; My, Oh My, the crimes pile up. Cambodia. Relations with perceived and marginalized lesser players on the world stage. I leave the balance of misjudgments and failed tactics out of this, knowing I err within the bounds of a decided understatement.
The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.
Diplomacy is not an exact art or science, and it's not easily or masterfully practiced through third-party manipulation. Condoleeza Rice is a fairly good example of someone who I believe to be attempting to operate under the management of an indirect actor (pick a neocon, any neocon) as she floats her negotiations in this most recent round of Middle East conflict. If her attempts are honestly made, she's not capable of the kind of nuance a true diplomat is born with; like a puppet on strings, her actions appear herky-jerky, stiff, and do not carry the weight of a true player. I strongly suspect that this is the unacknowledged intent of the puppeteer. Those who rolf our foreign policy believe that an awkward Secretary of State not visibly at ease with the negotiation process is the best smoke screen for the real direction of the US strategy.
Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.
These shadow actors have operated under the same belief system with the Office of the President. For whatever nefarious purpose, there is a buy-in, a belief that the public persona of a doofus President works to the advantage of the US. What we have here is a pseudo-Andy Kaufman Presidential era - except, in saying that, Andy Kaufman is thereby demeaned.
When you meet the president, you ask yourself, "How did it ever occur to anybody that he should be governor much less president?"
Tangentially now. There was my feckless diary, entitled, "Stepping back doesn't help". Maybe I'll finish that one some day. A gem of a paragraph from that one (ugh):
"I've stayed away for several days now. Not because I don't love y'all - I do. But, you see, it's overwhelming. The personal, the private, the political, the public. Imagine one of those neato little origami fortune tellers - did you know that they are also called "cootie catchers"? I didn't know. My mind has become a "cootie catcher", opening, closing, revealing numbers, choices - none of which are good and decent options, revealing personal fears and world crisis on every square, too negative and doomsaying to even consider."
It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.
You see? I just can't seem to get it together. I'm troubled with this feeling that I have missed a piece of the overall strategy at play. It's too easy to assign the word "incompetence" to our diplomatic parlays on the world scene. Which brings me to "The Trouble with Henry".
People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.
Kissinger's nuance now, ironically, is sorely missed. The interesting thing is that he is in so many ways completely responsible for the beginnings of this particular act of the Middle East play we find ourselves in. He was highly instrumental in playing the Israelis and others off against the Soviets. Henry was the ultimate shuttle diplomat - his marathon trips around the Middle East make the paltry efforts of Rice look like a one night stand with the only guy at the bar who didn't eat the beer nuts. Not that his ultimate result was more successful.
The contrasts between the Nixon administration and the younger Bush's fiefdom, contrasts in nuance and the art of sequencing diplomatic actions, are many. As Kissinger noted, "You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria." This administration will not talk with its perceived enemies, as arrogantly illustrated at a recent White House press conference. When asked why Bush was not being aggressive and engaging Syria directly, Snow's response exhibits the hallmark lack of attention that Bush appears to suffer from:
MR. SNOW: Because the track record stinks. I don't know if you remember all the old pictures of diplomats in the Reagan years going -- in the Carter, Reagan, and maybe even the early Bush years, the first Bush administration -- who knows, Clinton may have done it, too -- sitting around there drinking tea with Hafez al-Assad, the father, having to sit there for five, six, ten hours, listening to polite but long discourses on greater Syria, and at the end of that, having gotten nothing.
There is absolutely no reason to assume, based on the track record, that negotiations and conversations with the Syrians would yield any fruit. And as a consequence, rather than doing that, I think it is incumbent on the United States to use whatever moral force and moral power it has, and also let allies do the talking.
Read: Our way of diplomacy or the highway for you. No soup for you. I can only imagine how this lack of ability to focus on gentle give and take, patience, blindness to cultural differences in communication and ambience, absence of a genuine sangfroid as you lunch with your enemies goes over in countries like China.
China, of course, was the crown jewel of Kissinger's successes. He was perfectly willing to toss Taiwan over his shoulder in the interests of negotiating with a greater tiger. We, of course, sell arms to Taiwan, antagonizing the big kid on the block. It is speculated that Taiwan sells weapons to Syria, though not proven. And Syria, well, Syria just drinks tea and waits. Right?
A recent diary - Henry Kissinger Urges War with Iran: Omen or Announcement? on Kissinger's July 31st op-ed to the Washington Post came to some conclusions and comments that I beg to differ with. All bets are off on this, and I didn't catch the diary at the time, but I think it bears further thought.
Kissinger's article is an exercise in framing a course of action without committing to a specific - the mark of a true and nuance-capable diplomat. Sometimes that nuance fails in print when it succeeds in speech. I believe that Kissinger is exhorting further diplomacy, not an immediate jump to war. Certain phrases can be seen as a thinly veiled reflection on events in Iraq. Kissinger states that the "risk of war lies in exceeding objective limits". This is where we are, of course. We've exceeded. We're excessive. In the full paragraph, there are many key sentences - all echoes of what Kissinger has expounded previously:
Diplomacy never operates in a vacuum. It persuades not by the eloquence of its practitioners but by assembling a balance of incentives and risks. Clausewitz's famous dictum that war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means defines both the challenge and the limits of diplomacy. War can impose submission; diplomacy needs to evoke consensus. Military success enables the victor in war to prescribe, at least for an interim period. Diplomatic success occurs when the principal parties are substantially satisfied; it creates -- or should strive to create -- common purposes, at least regarding the subject matter of the negotiation; otherwise no agreement lasts very long. The risk of war lies in exceeding objective limits; the bane of diplomacy is to substitute process for purpose. Diplomacy should not be confused with glibness. It is not an oratorical but a conceptual exercise. When it postures for domestic audiences, radical challenges are encouraged rather than overcome.
Kissinger's perception, and of course we will likely not ever know, may at least partially view our current foreign policy stance as a dangerous ignoratio elenchi, a red herring meant for domestic audiences that hinders any true nuanced US diplomacy at the international negotiating table. This in turn continues to feed the conflict and Kissinger likes to be ever the cautionary oracle.
While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.
Kissinger has fallen out of favor in current times with Bush because Bush's course of action or inaction is one he does not necessarily or diplomatically agree with. He's stated this ever so subtly and not so subtly. "In the end, the United States must be prepared to vindicate its efforts to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons program. For that reason, America has an obligation to explore every honorable alternative."
He is not advocating steps towards war with Iran as he paints the following scenario (though military action is not off of the table):
"...an Iran concentrating on the development of the talents of its people and the resources of its country should have nothing to fear from the United States. Hard as it is to imagine that Iran, under its present president, will participate in an effort that would require it to abandon its terrorist activities or its support for such instruments as Hezbollah, the recognition of this fact should emerge from the process of negotiation rather than being the basis for a refusal to negotiate."
Henry is cognizant that any offensive, pre-emptive action on the part of the US against Iran puts China under economic threat. Our military history with Iraq and our ultimate greed for oil reveals the dangerous and tenuous dance of our "partnership" with China. China is still Kissinger's billion dollar baby.
Ah, enough of Kissinger, already. I hear the cries, I'll see the comments, and I'll desist. This is, after all, a Democratic blog. I'll take a page from Rummy's secret 20-questions blog.
- Will we call Kissinger a war criminal? Probably.
- Was Kissinger an advisor to a defamed Executive? Yes.
- Was he one of the President's men? Perhaps, though in many ways he wasn't a man of the "inner circle".
- Has he been accused of being a glib and sometimes imprudent orator? Highly likely.
- Is he a man taken with his own self-importance on the world stage, often perceived as overstepping his bounds in public life? Most definitely - and possibly most often by those in his Republican party of choice.
My goodness.
He is a man who understands timing and nuance, sequencing and engagement of all parties when it suits his purposes or what he once perceived as the national interest. A facility sorely and perhaps fatally missing from our immediate neo-con driven foreign policy.
Step back in history and read the article on Kissinger and Nixon from Time's Men of the Year 1973. It's a gem, too.
In circular fashion as usual, perhaps I'll realize there is no point in defending Kissinger.
I live near the Puget Sound, don'tcha know, and there is a spit of land called Point No Point, near the Hood Canal, on the western-northwestern shores, leading to the entrance of the Straits of Juan de Fuca. I think this is a fine place to retire. When big and bulky container ships pass by, it takes 15 minutes for the wake to wash ashore and when it does, it's like a miniature tidal wave against the narrow rocky, driftwood littered beach. Cruise ships pass on their way to Alaska, one after the other. I think you can see Canada there. Turn west and imagine China, and Russia, too.
The Ring of Fire awaits if you sail by Point No Point and travel far enough to sea. There are active earthquakes constantly, somewhere out there, the shifting of tectonics a very real and geophysical reminder of a world that is shifting and changing, straining against its own boundaries. It's a world that an individual has little real control over and the vast wide ocean knows it.
At the very least, I'd wish to have the boat pass by the lighthouse there - the boat that carries my ashes to sea when I've died. Perhaps someone can fling them off on the waters nearby. I'm certain I won't get the flaming Viking boat complete with burning pyre and accompanied by wailing Valkyries and strong, but weeping Viking warriors (Brad Pitt look-alikes, all) that I really want, though I surely deserve it with my pseudo-Berserker ancestry.
Sometimes one should just bide awhile in a spot where the name fits the place and time.
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
Henry A. Kissinger
Other points of Kissinger light:
Kissinger Network
The Thirty-Year Itch
Massive Collection of Formerly Secret and Top Secret Transcripts of Henry Kissinger's Meetings with World Leaders Published On-Line
