“appeal to people to give him a chance”
The BBC’s Andrew Neil speaks to Henry Kissinger about Donald Trump’s election.
Reality will impose certain requirements, as it does on every President. I’ve been in the Oval office now in 10 administrations and I’ve yet to see the President who escapes the fact that he is part of a continuum and that he cannot reinvent history.
Election result … totally unexpected
Transcript of video – only Kissinger remarks:
Does he have a general direction that he has expressed? I’d say yes.
Does he have a sense of tactical decisions of how he is going to reach these objectives?
The world has been undergoing a huge change even from the period which I had formal responsibility and that change would work itself out regardless of whose President of the United States and who is the leader in Europe. This will have to be faced.
It is compounded by the fact that for about a year now foreign policy has been on hold in the sense that every country has been waiting for the result of the American election and the result being so totally unexpected and now they will have to go back to the drawing board including “we”, so that is a fundamental challenge that any new President would have faced. Trump will face it in an especially acute way, but at the same time you could say there are a number of issues that have not been looked at. Namely how Russia adjusts to an international system in which it has lost a big part of its traditional empire. What the rise of China signifies, so the whole shift of the center of gravity of the world from the Atlantic towards the Pacific. A situation in the Middle East which is characterized by the absence of any agreed legitimacy for settling. This would have been on the agenda.
Trump has not engaged himself in foreign policy discussions up to now. It is at least one should hope that the magnitude of the problem should lead to reflections that are not the same of those of a day to day election campaign.
You can look at if from 2 points of view. You could say the terror groups may have an incentive to get into a negotiation with the United States which I think would be a bad mistake. But they may so. You can imagine a surprisingly soft line from the terror groups. The more likely reaction will be to do something that will evokes a reaction that the terror groups will widen the split, whatever it is, between Europe and United States and America’s image in the world. I’d lean towards that as my belief.
He is now the President of the United States and he will have to make the key decisions on which a great part of the future of the world depends.
I would say the outlet observers, including people like myself, owe him the opportunity to develop a concept that is related to the questions that you put. I really would appeal to people to give him a chance to develop in relation to a kind of foreign policy that he has not had to consider before. I don’t claim that I have any special insight into what will in fact be the decisions.
A lot of it will depend on the advisers
Henry Kissinger visits President elect Donald Trump in Manhattan November 17, 2016 – screen grab ABC News
A lot of it will depend on the advisers, but after all the linkage of Europe and the United States grew out of a historical experience. It wasn’t the personal idiosyncrasies, you see, of individual Presidents and so the elements by which that security link was evolved will be given, must be given, consideration.
And all I suggest is that Europe doesn’t approach it with a preconceived notion.
Reality will impose certain requirements, as it does on every President. I’ve been in the Oval office now in 10 administrations and I’ve yet to see the President who escapes the fact that he is part of a continuum and that he cannot reinvent history. And so, I hope and expect that a dialogue will develop that fulfills, at least, that’s what we should all work for.
http://www.henryakissinger.com/
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New World Order can be created.
It is a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis.
President Obama and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State. Photo credit: Dennis Brack/Pool/Sipa Press/secpotusipa.004/1011190005
What advice did Henry Kissinger give newly elected President Barack Obama?
Jan. 5, 2009: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger talks to CNBC’s Mark Haines and Erin Burnett on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Original video on CNBC: New World Order can be created
“The President elect (Barack Obama) is coming into office at a moment when there are upheavals in many parts of the world simultaneously. You have India, Pakistan. You have jihadist movements. So he can’t really say there is one problem that is the most important one.
He can give new impetus to American foreign policy partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. I think his task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when really a New World Order can be created. It is a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis.”