The former US Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs reflects on British and American attitudes to foreign policy
Britain and America have never ceased to play important roles in each other's history. On the whole it has been a productive and creative relationship, perhaps one of the most durable in the history of nations. In the last 200 years, we have approached each other sometimes warily, and dealt with foreign affairs often from different perspectives. Still, on balance, the relationship has been of considerable benefit to world peace.
Britain has rarely proclaimed moral absolutes or rested her faith in the ultimate efficacy of technology, despite her achievements in this field. Philosophically, she remains Hobbesian: she expects the worst and is rarely disappointed. In moral matters Britain has traditionally practised a convenient form of ethical egoism, believing that what was good for Britain
was best for the rest.
This requires a certain historical self-confidence, not to say nerve, to carry it off. But she has always practised it with an innate moderation and civilised humaneness such that her presumption was frequently justified.
American foreign policy is the product of a very different tradition. The Founding Fathers were sophisticated men who understood the European balance of power and skilfully manipulated it to win independence. But for a century and more after that America, comfortably protected by two oceans - which in turn were secured by the Royal Navy - developed the idiosyncratic notion that a fortunate accident was a natural state of affairs, that our involvement in world politics was purely a matter of choice.
That two countries with such divergent traditions could form a durable partnership is remarkable in itself. The periods of the close Anglo-American "special relationship," the object of such nostalgia today, were also times of occasional mutual exasperation.
In my negotiations over Rhodesia I worked from a British draft with British spelling, even when I did not fully grasp the distinction between a working paper and a Cabinet-approved document. The practice of collaboration thrives to our day, with occasional ups and downs, but even in the Falklands crisis, an inevitable return to the main theme of the relationship.
Clearly, British membership of Europe has added a new dimension. But the solution, in my view, is not to sacrifice the special intimacy of the Anglo-American connection on the altar of the European idea, but rather to replicate it on a wider plane of America's relations with all its European allies, whether bilaterally or with a politically cohesive European Community - that is for Europe to decide.
In the early stages of the Falklands crisis, America hesitated between its Atlantic and its Western hemisphere vocations. But these disagreements did no lasting damage. In the end we came together; the old friendship prevailed over other considerations.
One of Britain's contributions to the Western alliance has been to supply a needed global perspective: the knowledge, from centuries of experience in Europe, that peace requires some clear-eyed notion of equilibrium and a willingness to maintain it; the insight, from centuries of world leadership, that Europe's security cannot be isolated from the broader context of the global balance; the awareness, from heroic exertions in this century, that those who cherish the values of Western civilisation must be willing to defend them. In the Falklands crisis, Britain is reminding us all that certain basic principles, such as honour, justice, and patriotism, remain valid and must be sustained by more than words.
[This is an edited version of Dr Kissinger's speech at the Royal Institute of International Affairs to mark the bicentenary of the office of Foreign Secretary.]
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