(nst) Henry Kissinger had had an "unbelievable career", said Kurt Spillmann, ETH emeritus Professor for Security and Conflict Studies at the media conference last week with the United States famous "Elder Statesman“. The event was Zurich's tenth Churchill-Europe Symposium (1), at which Kissinger, as invited speaker, illuminated "Europe from the USA's point of view“. A Jew born in Bavaria in 1923, he fled the Nazis, arrived in the US in 1938, became Harvard Professor of Strategic Studies, later political advisor to the US federal government and went on to become the country's best-known Secretary of State of the 20th century. Kissinger smoothed the way in the 1970s for the détente process between East and West and was a decisive participant in bringing the Yom-Kippur war between Israel and its Arab opponents to an end. In 1973 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. lt must be said that the political role played by Kissinger in the Cold War era is also a subject of controversy today, namely in the shaping of US foreign policy with regard to Latin America.

Many-voiced Europe

The Churchill Symposium, organised for the tenth time this year, is held in memory of Britain's wartime Prime Minister Churchill's path-breaking statement of his vision of politically unified Europe, held at the University of Zurich in 1946. In this speech, Churchill suggested the founding of "a kind of United States of Europe“ to emerge from "a partnership between France and Germany". Purportedly, Kissinger once said to Willy Brandt, "When I want to speak to Europe I never know which number to dial“. Whether true of not this one-linger neatly demonstrates a deficit that still exists today from a US point of view. Europe, according to Kissinger, has to find its way to a common foreign policy. But decision-making processes within the EU were still far too cumbersome to make this possible. It was hardly surprising that media representatives present ask the grand old man of geopolitics for his assessment of the on-going stalemate situation following the recent German elections. His somewhat terse answer was that the internationally important player Germany needed a clear political direction. Anything else was detrimental for the country, for Europe and, in the end, also for its allied partners, like the USA.

Henry A. Kissinger (left) at the media conference and moderator Kurt Spillmann, emeritus ETH Professor for Security Studies and Conflict Analysis. large

Iraq: dangerous developments

The talk then moved on to terrorism and the US intervention in Iraq took centre stage. At the moment, the danger was great that the conflict in Iraq would turn into an altercation between ethnic-religious fractions, said Kissinger. If this occurred in combination with a religious radicalisation and US policy there were to fail, this would have unforeseeable consequences for the whole of the Islamic world. This is why the primary question for the participating forces should not be "how do we get out ". It was more a question of accepting the shared responsibility, "regardless of what one thought of the initial decision to carry out this intervention", said the former US Secretary of State. In principle, he said, Europe should be playing a bigger role in Iraq than is the case at the moment.

New constellations

The focus then became wider and Kissinger described the Bush administration as an era that was marked, more than any other, by fundamental geopolitical changes. The end of the East-West conflict, internationally operating terrorism, as well as the economic ascent of China and the pacific region were leading to new challenges that had yet to be met. There was a level of uncertainty in the world today that can be compared to the situation in the post war years 1945–1950. The cards were being reshuffled and political answers were still lacking.