David M. Lampton: Reflections on Henry Kissinger

David M. Lampton is Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins—SAIS and former Director of SAIS China and China Studies there. He currently is Senior Research Scholar at SAIS’ Foreign Policy Institute. He has been President of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and Chairman of the Asia Foundation, as well as Director of the China Programs at the Nixon Center and the American Enterprise Institute. In January 2024 Rowman & Littlefield will publish his book, LIVING U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS: FROM COLD WAR TO COLD WAR.

One of my last conversations with Henry Kissinger was in May 2023, literally a few days before his one-hundredth birthday. He made a Herculean physical effort to engage in two hours of conversation with a small group of us and then two months later made his final, arduous trip to the PRC. His mind was sharp, his body frail.

The topic of the conversation concerned whether it was advisable to go to China, hoping to nudge dialogue between Beijing and Washington forward.  In January-February 2023, a Chinese reconnaissance balloon had glided across the American continent, in the process derailing a planned visit to China by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and hindering progress on the road map for gradually stabilizing relations drawn up by Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping in Bali the previous November.

Dr. Kissinger wanted to discuss with us key trends in China and in the bilateral relationship. In weighing whether or not to go to the PRC he was concerned that he not intrude into U.S. Government prerogatives, but, also weighing on his mind was the thought that the moment required exertions by everyone, not least himself. It was just too perilous to have Beijing and Washington promoting mutually unacceptable strategies. Hoping that things would work out was not a policy.

Henry made that long trip. It had an impact. One of the last lessons he taught us all was the power of persistence, will, and vision.

Dr. Kissinger was fond of recounting a (probably mistaken) story in which Premier Zhou Enlai, when asked how he appraised the consequences of the French Revolution, replied: “It is too soon to say.” Irrespective of the story’s accuracy, this kind of time horizon is needed not only for a fulsome evaluation of historical epochs, but Kissinger himself.

Personally, my life has had me on both sides of the barricades, supporting and opposing, Dr. Kissinger’s various policies. The war in Southeast Asia of the 1960s and 1970s, and its misguided premises and the carnage of its prosecution, brought me into the China field and the anti-Vietnam War movement. On the other hand, with the Nixon-Kissinger move toward China and the Vietnam War’s end, the Nixon Administration initiated what became forty-plus years of engagement. White House moves in the first half of the 1970s were part of the complex story of China’s modernization and the remarkable material betterment of the Chinese people. Last but not least, the Nixon-Kissinger Strategic Arms Limitation talks with Moscow, deterrence of the USSR, and peace with America all contributed to Beijing’s long-standing assessment that it did not need an extensive nuclear arsenal. That assessment by Beijing has changed and now small elites in both societies have in their hands a growing number of instruments of global destruction.

Nonetheless, given the challenges America now faces with the PRC, some observers and political forces now question the wisdom of the policy of being supportive of the modernization of China and its global integration. I am not one of them, nor was Henry Kissinger.

I have always felt that because of his formative experiences in a tumultuous, brutal Europe, Dr. Kissinger had a conceptual and visceral attachment to stability, an attachment he shared with most Chinese leaders and citizens. Both China and Kissinger had been through periods of unimaginable societal breakdown and had learned that excessive tumult is not the soil in which human rights, democracy, and material betterment grow. Material power, strong leaders, and balance of power are essential instruments in the toolbox of domestic and global governance. For Dr. Kissinger, stability was necessary for progress, but, I do not believe that he thought that was alone sufficient. How to achieve stability, welfare, and justice is the task Dr. Kissinger has left for those who follow.