Kissinger: "I Do Not Accept the Decline of the West"

In recent weeks, Henry Kissinger has sometimes talked rather more like a Harvard historian than a pragmatic diplomat-negotiator. To aides, newsmen and foreign officials, Kissinger allowed that he feared the possibility of political instability in parts of Europe and that some nations, as a result of the economic crisis, might in desperation embrace authoritarian forms of government.

But does Kissinger really have a Spenglerian view of Western civilization and its future? Last week, in a conversation with TIME Diplomatic Editor Jerrold L. Schecter, Kissinger seemed to be more hopeful than previous reports had suggested. Sitting in an alcove of Cairo's marble-and-alabaster Tahra Palace during his two-day visit with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the Secretary of State conceded that for a historian, the signs might point in the direction of a decline of the West's political systems. But as a statesman, Kissinger emphasized: "I do not accept the decline of the West as a historical inevitability. I'm trying to be realistic and face what is ahead. You don't abolish these trends by not facing them."

Kissinger attributes the present crisis of leadership in the Western world--and the Soviet Union as well--to problems resulting from the process of industrialization. This had led to "bureaucratic immobilization" and "bureaucratic populist paralysis." England, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy all suffer from it, although the U.S. does not. The new leaders hi France and West Germany, he believes, appear to have eased that problem there.

The statesman today faces a dilemma, Kissinger told Schecter; he needs wide vision and yet is overwhelmed by events. A statesman "has no opportunity to think in longer terms. There is now a need for farsightedness of governments to an unusual degree. There is a need for leadership to have confidence." But in the U.S., he believes, there is a sufficient reserve of leadership. "America's ability to go through Watergate with its confidence intact" demonstrates its resiliency. "It is doubtful that any European country could go through the same upheaval without civil war," he adds. "The U.S. is still healthier than any other country." America's problem is that it tends to direct its attention to dealing with and solving immediate problems while "the necessity is for discipline and foresight to carry out necessary measures that cannot in advance be proven to be necessary."

Kissinger, reports Schecter, sees the current energy crisis as a problem that demands the industrial nations enter "a new era of creativity and cooperation that will help the developing nations as well." If nothing is done and oil prices remain high, Kissinger fears, all debts will become worthless paper and trigger a widespread industrial collapse that would have a greater impact on the developing world than on industrial nations.

Nonetheless, Kissinger remains hopeful, believing that the industrial nations have already begun meeting the challenges of the energy crisis and have moved toward greater cooperation. "If we are strong and confident and work together, we can deal with what is ahead and rally people to do what has to be done." This process, he warns, will be gradual. "It is not a failure if world oil prices do not come down the day after I make a speech. The goal was to rally the countries concerned to face the magnitude of the problem."

The Secretary of State struck the same note last week hi a long interview with James Reston of the New York Times:

"If you act creatively, you should be able to use crises to move the world toward the structural solutions that are necessary," said Kissinger, holding out the hope that toward the end of the century, Western Europe, Japan and the U.S. will have found a way of turning the current economic crisis "into something positive by understanding the responsibilities they share for each other's progress" and by a "degree of financial solidarity, a degree of equalizing burdens and a degree of ability to set common goals."

The present, continued Kissinger, has more strain but also more opportunities than the past "because we really have no choice but to address our problems. Who would have thought of an international food policy, or a World Food Conference, ten years ago? Today it is only a question of tune until we develop it. The real question is will we develop it soon enough? I think we can."

Most foreign programs have been sold to the American public "with the argument that they would mean an end to exertion. Now we have to convince Americans that there will never be an end to exertion." At the same time, the U.S. has had to learn its limits: "growing up is largely a process of learning that one is not immortal, that one cannot achieve everything, and then to draw from that realization the strength to set great goals."

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