Statecraft and Stagecraft

Henry Kissinger | Colin Powell | George Schulz

As America’s chief diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice occupies the most powerful unelected position in our democracy. While Rice may believe that history is evolving toward a world of liberal democracies that look more or less like the United States, the job she occupies is a throwback to the days when French noblemen and Austrian counts drew lines on maps that determined the fates of nations for centuries to come. Foreign policy is where American democracy stops and a combination of executive authority, expert opinions, hard economic and geopolitical realities, and the persuasive skill of deal-makers takes over.

As part of his reporting about Condoleezza Rice and America’s new policy in the Middle East, author David Samuels sat down with three former Secretaries of State to see how they understand America’s current place in the world and the possibilities for diplomatic engagement with our friends and enemies in the Middle East and elsewhere. Here are some excerpts from those conversations.

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DR. HENRY KISSINGER
(click here for interview)

Dr. Henry Kissinger, 84, is one of the most high profile and controversial diplomats in American history. As National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, Kissinger helped pioneer the policy of détente with the Soviet Union and opened American diplomatic relations with communist China. In 1973, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam, which led to the withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam, and to the defeat of the South Vietnamese government by North Vietnamese troops in 1975. 

Kissinger’s critics, most recently Christopher Hitchens, have insisted that Kissinger’s policies toward Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, East Timor, Bangladesh and Cyprus amount to war crimes for which Kissinger should be held accountable in a court of law.

David Samuels spoke with Dr. Kissinger in Manhattan about Condoleezza Rice and American policy in the Middle East at the offices of Kissinger McLarty Associates, the international strategic consulting firm in which Dr. Kissinger is a principal.

Click here to read the interview.

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GENERAL COLIN POWELL
(click here for interview)

The career of General Colin Powell, 70, gives the lie to the modern idea that diplomacy and warfare are mutually exclusive pursuits. As Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, Powell became the first African-American leader of the American military, as well as the youngest military chief in American history. Having served as a young officer in Vietnam,  Powell has always been famously cautious about the use of American military force, opposing the decision to deploy troops to the Middle East during the First Gulf War and warning President George W. Bush that “if you break it, you own it,” when the Bush Administration was debating the invasion of Iraq.

Powell’s tenure as Secretary of State was crowned by some notable diplomatic successes, particularly when it came to obtaining American bases in the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia (“the ‘stans”), and building and maintaining an unprecedented degree of simultaneous strategic cooperation with historical rivals like India and Pakistan. It was also marred by a significant degree of public and private infighting with other Administration officials and by his decision to represent the Administration at the U.N. to make the case about the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction that were supposedly in the hands of Saddam Hussein. 

David Samuels spoke with General Powell about the relative advantages of using “soft power” and “hard power” in spreading American influence and ideas, and about the current state of American diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere, at General Powell’s office in Arlington, Virginia.

Click here to read the interview.

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DR. GEORGE SCHULTZ
(click here for interview)

At the age of 86, George Schultz remains one of the most influential voices on foreign policy in the Republican Party by virtue of his strong opinions and a remarkable record of public service that began in 1955 when he was appointed by President Eisenhower to serve on the Council of Economic Advisors. A former Marine captain who fought in the Pacific for three years at the height of World War II, Schultz received his Ph.D. from MIT and taught at MIT and later at the University of Chicago. After serving in the Nixon Administration as Secretary of Labor and Secretary of the Treasury, Schultz became head of the global construction giant Bechtel, where he led massive construction projects in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East.

In 1982, Schultz became Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, a position that he occupied for six and a half years from the climax of the Cold War until the end of the Reagan Administration. While Schultz’s favorite metaphor for diplomacy is gardening, he is best known in foreign policy circles for his advocacy of a hard-nosed balance of diplomacy backed by a credible threat of military force. He has also been called “the father of the Bush doctrine,” for his advocacy of the idea of preventive war.

In the 1990s, Schultz became the grandfather, or godfather, to a group of Republican foreign policy specialists who became known as the Vulcans, and who included many of the architects of the Iraq war, including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice. In 1998, Schultz introduced Rice to then-Governor George W. Bush.

David Samuels spoke with George Schultz about American diplomacy in the Middle East, the Cold War, the global spread of market capitalism, and his relationship with Condoleezza Rice at Schultz’s office at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Click here to read the interview.