Kissinger on Kissinger: ‘My job was to inspire, not to gratify’
In 1977,Douglass Cater, vice-chairman of the Observer, and Kenneth Harris, associate editor, called on Dr Henry Kissinger in his10th-flooroffice at theGeorgetown Centre for Strategic and International Studieswhere hewasprofessor of diplomacy. This is an extract from thatexclusiveinterview.
Did your early years, up to the age of 15 in Germany, have a formative influence on your thinking?
I think it is impossible to live in a totalitarian state, especially as a member of a persecuted minority, without realising that societies are subject to nearly irrevocable disasters and that it cannot be taken for granted that things will always evolve in the most positive direction.
And secondly, I think that, corny as this may sound, it gives one an appreciation of the importance of the United States that some of the intellectuals who are so critical of the country just don’t understand.
When I came to this country I was asked to do an essay in high school about what coming to America meant to me. I wrote that it wasn’t easy to be a refugee with an accent in a new country, but that when I think that here I can cross the street with my head erect, it is a tremendously moving experience.
Now I admit, this is personal, but anyone who was in the war in Europe and saw how Americans were received at the end of the war, must believe that this country has a very crucial role to give hope to the world, and that it therefore mustn’t destroy itself by this endless self-torment.
Did you ever wonder how you were able to get along – better than anyone else – as a Jew with the Arab leaders?
Well, it had its poignant elements. I attempted in any negotiation to understand as profoundly as I could the psychology and the aspirations of the people with whom I was dealing. It’s popular mythology to believe that a good negotiator is somebody who tells different things to different people. You can never succeed that way, because you meet the same people over and over again.
A good negotiator is somebody who can give others the confidence to move in what they must each perceive to be their own interest and, since they are responsible for the future of their country, you would be reckless if you try to trick them about that. What you can do is to affect the margins of their perception, and I considered that my principal role.
You once said, ‘Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac’.You never really explained what you meant.
Well, that was a joke, but you certainly … I mean it’s clear that when you are in high office, your social life sometimes multiplies beyond your intrinsic merits.
There’s been criticism of the large amounts of money being tendered to you and to some others who’ve left the government. How do you take this criticism? I was deeply in debt when I left office as a result of public service. Even now a considerable amount of my income has to go for providing personal security for myself.
Were you a neurotic man in your dealing with associates – an emotional man – a man who was difficult to get along with?
I’m not the best judge of my personality. The fact is that almost all of my close associates stayed with me for eight years. Almost all of them became close friends. I think a lot of the public image I have has been created by people who served with me for a year at the beginning of my Washington career and have made an industry out of this association. Not enough attention has been paid to the people who stayed with me for eight years and who formed one of the most cohesive and, I like to think, thoughtful groups of associates any senior official was privileged to have.
I believe it is the role of the head of an organisation to inspire his associates to do things that they didn’t know they could do. You can always hire technical competence; what you cannot always hire is the ability to transcend the given framework. That can be a painful process.
But finally, one is judged in one’s public career, not by the ease of the dayto-day conduct of affairs, but by what people feel about it after it was concluded. And I have found the friendship and the dedication of my associates extremely moving. I will not pretend that I was easy to deal with. My job was to inspire, not to gratify.
A group of your Harvard colleagues came to urge you to resign in 1970…
May 1970 – during Cambodia.
Did you come close to leaving office during the eight years?
Really close, only twice. But not for the reasons that they urged. If you leave, you can get headlines for three days. But you lose the opportunity of shaping events over a long period. And what each public figure has to decide is when to resign and on what issue. And to make sure that it isn’t either selfgratification or a subtle attempt to protect one’s future.