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PDF FormatBy the time Kissinger left office, in January 1977, he had successfully redrawn the map of the Middle East. Following a war that threatened to unleash years of armed conflict between the Arab states and Israel, with possible superpower intervention, he created a framework for peace among some of the most powerful governments in the region, particularly those in Cairo and Jerusalem. He negotiated intensively for armed disengagement near their border, the return of territory occupied by Israel on the Sinai Peninsula, and a commitment to basic cooperation between the states. He utilized the full arsenal of American pressure, pleading, and bribery to achieve this end. Most significantly, Kissinger made the United States a mediator trusted by Egypt and Israel, the one government both Arabs and Jews could look to for assurance.
Kissinger’s Middle East policy was a natural extension of the strategy he applied to other parts of the world. The regimes in Egypt and Israel provided local authority, which was supported and indirectly managed by the United States from afar. Peace in the region was not about justice or democracy. It focused on state-centered stability. Basic freedoms, in Kissinger’s view, derived from strong and enlightened leadership rather than popular consensus. This was a vision for the region that self-consciously approximated Metternich’s or Bismarck’s Europe much more than the religious prophecies of the Bible or the Koran. It was the well-considered worldview of a German Jew seeking to protect cherished values—and his heritage—from political extremes.
Speaking “from the heart” to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in January 1977, Kissinger explained how his work for the American state and his Jewish background came together:
I thought it was important for the future of Israel and for the future of the Jewish people, that the actions that the United States government took were not seen to be the result of a special, personal relationship; that the support we gave Israel reflected not my personal preferences alone but the basic national interests of the United States, transcending the accident of who might be in office at any particular period. I have never forgotten that thirteen members of my family died in concentration camps, nor could I ever fail to remember what it was like to live in Nazi Germany as a member of a persecuted minority. I believe, however, that the relationship of Israel to the United States transcends these personal considerations. I do not believe that it is compatible with the moral conscience of mankind to permit Israel to suffer in the Middle East a ghetto existence that has been suffered by Jews in many individual countries throughout their history. The support for a free and democratic Israel in the Middle East is a moral necessity of our period to be pursued by every administration, and with a claim to the support of all freedom-loving people all over the world.58
Kissinger closed his remarks by invoking his own continued Jewish faith and his attachment to Israel: “Throughout their history, Jews have been saying to themselves: ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ I would like to think that sometime soon we can say this in its deepest sense—in an Israel that is secure, that is accepted, that is at peace.”59
VI
In many ways, Kissinger’s vision became a reality. On the eve of September 11, 2001, Israel and Egypt remained at peace. Kissinger’s map of the Middle East endured twenty-five years of low-intensity Arab-Israeli fighting, in addition to other conflicts in the region. The United States served as a mediator between the sides and a sponsor of “moderate” regimes. It was the dominant external power in the region, a fact it had proven by leading an international coalition of forces, including Arab states, to turn back Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iraq’s oil-rich neighbor Kuwait. Although an Islamic revolution in Iran had expelled American influence from that country and humiliated Americans through a prolonged hostage crisis, it had not altered the region’s borders or sparked a renewed Arab-Israeli war. Moreover, it assured American access to inexpensive oil.
However, this geopolitical stability in the Middle East masked much deeper domestic disturbances. Kissinger’s strategy had the effect of reinforcing dictatorship and discontent. His policies draw attention to the United States as a visible sponsor of oppressors such as Sadat, his successor Hosni Mubarak, the shah of Iran, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and Saddam Hussein. These men cooperated with Washington while they brutalized their own populations. Kissinger’s policies did not address the anger, resentment, and desire for political change voiced by citizens living in Arab societies.60 The United States built peace in the Middle East on the backs of iron-fisted Arab and Israeli leaders.
Kissinger understood the nature of this policy and its democratic shortcomings. Such a flagrant disregard for democratic principles was not unique to his endeavors in the Middle East. His entire career was based on the presumption that in a cruel and violent world, powerful leaders—and not democratic politics—offered the best protection for life and liberty. For Kissinger, statesmanship required tolerating brutality as a bulwark against further suffering. Transcendent leaders needed the courage to make tough choices among lesser evils. This is how he interpreted recent history. During the 1940s the United States and Great Britain fought one of history’s most destructive wars to rescue Europe from Nazi tyranny. After Germany’s surrender, the West had to deploy the most deadly of weapons to insure the survival of civilization in the face of communist expansion. In the Middle East, Kissinger believed that the United States had to follow a similar logic. Washington would work closely with unsavory regimes to prevent the region from immolating itself in a fire of mass hatred.
Increased democracy in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia would only heighten the chances of war, according to Kissinger. Antisemitism and other hatreds had popular appeal, and violence was a simple and attractive option for angry citizens. Was it not better to work with figures like Sadat, who ruled as dictators but also used their power to repress popular calls for war? Was it not better to acquiesce in Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza than to allow those lands to become a base for renewed attacks on the Jewish state? The United States sought to build sustainable political stability in the region before it could pursue far-reaching reform. The Middle East, like other areas of the world, needed reliable and rational local authorities. Only after these authorities asserted themselves, with American support, could Washington “let history take its course.”61
VII
Kissinger’s experiences as a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States, and his emotional attachment to a particular vision of the American dream, did not solely determine his policies toward the Middle East or other regions of the world. Ethnicity and identity are not independent variables that explain, in and of themselves, foreign policy outcomes. They are not static sources of meaning either. Kissinger’s perception of his place in American society underwent changes from his time in the army, through his years at Harvard, until his last days in the White House. At each stage of his career, he adapted to various pressures and incentives—world war, openings in higher education, and policymaking in the shadow of Vietnam. Most significantly, his assessments of threats and opportunities changed in reaction to different perceptions of violence, antisemitism, and popular opinion. Kissinger’s personal identity, like his policies, was quite malleable for a wide range of circumstances.
That said, his background and experiences exerted a consistent influence throughout his career. As an immigrant, Kissinger always viewed the American state as a source of salvation: It had saved his family and made his professional advancement possible. He thus hinged all of his activities on the goal of strengthening the American state, protecting it from enemies (internal and external), and enhancing its image in the eyes of others. He defined the American state as the foundation for all values, even to the point of justifying the flagrant violation of basic principles in its defense. Kissinger’s attachment to raison d’état was deeper than considerations of realpolitik alone; it reflected an immigrant’s emotional connection to his newfound home.
