Stimulating sports: Henry Kissinger on soccer

As mentioned in a previous post, Henry Kissinger is an avid soccer fan. And he has used his political clout to help further the game, too. He was instrumental in bringing the World Cup to the United States in 1994 (something he harkens toward at the end of the following column) and even served for a time as commissioner of the now defunct Northern American Soccer League. In fact, win the New York Cosmos were in their heyday back in the 1970s, Kissinger was one of the many "celebrity" fans that turned out to watch Pele, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, etc. work their magic at the Meadowlands. And he has attended every World Cup since 1974--with the exception of the 2002 event.

This post contains to excellent writings on soccer, penned by Kissinger. The first was published in the Los Angeles Times during the 1986 World Cup. The second--on Pele--was published in Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.

I have been an avid soccer fan ever since my youth in Fuerth, a soccer-mad city of southern Germany, which for some inexplicable reason won three championships in a three-year period. My father despaired of a son who preferred to stand for two hours (there were very few seats) watching a soccer game rather than sit in the comfort at the opera or be protected from the elements in a museum.

Soccer evokes extraordinary passions, especially during the quadrennial World Cup competition ending today in Mexico City. It has been estimated that the Brazilian gross national product suffers a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for every day Brazil plays, as rabid fans sit before television sets or radios. Statistics in other soccer citadels must be comparable.

Soccer lends itself to a competition of national teams because it requires an extraordinary combination of individual skill, teamwork and strategic sense. Since there are 11 players on each side engaged in continuous action, every game produces tactical necessities to be solved by improvisation on the playing field.

This was true even in my youth when soccer was much less complex and much more oriented to the offense. Then there were five forwards, three midfield players, two fullbacks and a goalie. The offense being numerically superior to the defense, goals were much more frequent then. By the late 1930s, managers sought to overcome this advantage by assigning the center half to shadow the opposing center forward. The creation of three de facto fullbacks constricted the attack which since time immemorial had been built around the center forward.

In the early 1950s, the Hungarians showed how to overwhelm this defense, turning their center forward into a decoy. He would move to the sidelines or toward midfield, drawing the shadowing defensive player out of position, creating an empty space in front of the goal.

But as in military strategy every offensive maneuver in soccer evokes a compensating defensive move. The answer to the roving center forward was a zone defense; defensive players were required to cover a certain area regardless of which player was attacking. Total soccer was invented soon thereafter; all players had to be able to defend as well as attack and to shift from one mode to another with extreme rapidity.

The modern style of soccer in fact emphasizes defense — with few exceptions like Brazil, Argentina and France. The basic alignment has become four defensive and four midfield players; the forwards have shrunk to two. Massed defenses can in general be overcome only by rapid thrusts involving very accurate passing. The result is a very tactical game, its complexity becoming a fascinating reflection of national attitudes.

The styles of leading soccer powers like West Germany, Brazil, Italy and England illustrate this point.

West Germany, a finalist today, is, with Italy and Brazil, the most successful team of the modern era. West German soccer entered the postwar era with no particular legacy. Postwar Germany's newly professional soccer being as novel as the frontiers of the state it represents, it could adopt total soccer with a vengeance. The German national team plays the way its general staff prepared for the war; games are meticulously planned, each player skilled in both attack and defense. Intricate pass patterns evolve, starting right in front of the German goal. Anything achievable by human foresight, careful preparation and hard work is accounted for.

And there have been great successes. Of the last six prior World Cups, Germany has won two, was second twice, third once and out of the running only in 1978. At the same time, the German national team suffers from the same disability as the famous Schlieffen plan for German strategy in World War I. There is a limit to human foresight; psychological stress on those charged with executing excessively complex maneuvers cannot be calculated in advance. If the German team falls behind, or if its intricate approach yields no results, its game is shadowed by the underlying national premonition that in the end even the most dedicated effort will go unrewarded, by the nightmare that ultimately fate is cruel--a nightmare reinforced by the knowledge that the German media are unmerciful when high expectations go unfulfilled. The impression is unavoidable that an outstanding national soccer team has not brought a proportionate amount of joy to a people that may not in its heart of hearts believe joy is the ultimate national destiny.

Brazil suffers no such inhibitions. Its national teams are an assertion that virtue without joy is a contradiction in terms. Brazilian teams display a contagious exuberance; Brazilian fans cheer them on to the ecstatic beat of samba bands. Brazil always has the most acrobatic players, the individuals one cannot forget whatever the outcome of the match. But, as in Brazil's political institutions, this individualism is combined with an extraordinary ability to make the practical arrangements required for effective national performance. As a result, Brazil has appeared in more World Cups and won more than any other team. It was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the current competition partly as a result of an egregious seeding placing Italy, the old World Cup holder; France, the European champion, and two potential champions--Brazil and West Germany-- in the same half of a sudden-death elimination round, while the other half contained only one team, Argentina--today's other finalist--that has ever been in the final four.

To be sure, the Brazilians, being human, cannot avoid some weaknesses. The players sometimes are so intoxicated by their brilliant maneuvers that they occasionally forget the purpose of the exercise is to score goals. And I have never seen an outstanding Brazilian goal-keeper. Perhaps the task is too lonely; the goalkeeper after all has to stay put while his teammates enjoy themselves tracing clever pass patterns on the turf. Or perhaps the only purely defensive assignment on a team offends the Brazilian self-image.

Yet a Brazilian team on the attack--which is most of the time--looks like a dancing band at carnival. Wave after wave of yellow shirts roll against the opposing goal until the opposition is overwhelmed without being humiliated; it is no disgrace to be defeated by a team whose style no one else can imitate.

Italy's record places it among the top teams of world soccer although it fell victim to the same absurd seeding as Brazil. The Italian style reflects the national conviction, forged by the vicissitudes of an ancient history, that the grim struggle for survival must be based on a careful husbanding of energy for the main task. It presupposes a correct assessment of the opponent's character, paired with an unostentatious and matter-of-fact perseverance that obscures many intricate levels on which the competition takes place. The initial objective of Italian teams is to force the opponent out of his game plan, to wreck his concentration and to induce him to abandon his preferred style. In the early stages of a match, the Italian team tends to look destructive and purely defensive-- a style achievable only by extreme toughness and discipline. But once the Italian team has imposed its pattern, it can play some of the most effective, even beautiful soccer in the world--though it will never waste energy simply on looking good.

No discussion of national soccer styles can be complete without reference to England. Before World War II and for nearly a decade after, England was clearly the dominant power. I say England, because for purposes of international soccer, the United Kingdom fields four teams: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A single United Kingdom team using the best players from each would be even more formidable.

The decline in the fortunes of the English team is, in my view, primarily caused by a refusal to adapt to the tactics of the modern era. Before World War II, the English team overwhelmed its opponents with speed, power and condition. But as defenses massed, the English quick-breaking style lost much of its effectiveness; as most of Europe went over to professional soccer, the advantage of superior conditioning eroded. Yet England refused to adapt its tactical plan to the passing game needed to break open the modern defense.

The English national team had never lost a game at home until 1954, when Hungary prevailed with its roving center forward. Since then, the English team has gradually declined. It is steady, reliable, tough. It never yields to panic. It is never defeated one-sidedly. It achieves everything attainable by character and tenacity. Regrettably-- because I thought the pre-World War II game was more fun to watch-- it has also been somewhat pedantic, as if in nostalgic thrall to a bygone era. England has never won a European championship; it has prevailed only once in the World Cup and that was 20 years ago playing before its own fans. All of us who enjoy England's muscular game hope that England's relative success in the current matches heralds a real revival.

The World Cup arouses passions because it involves both an athletic competition and a contest of national styles. It can be no accident that the most offensive-minded and elegant European team is France, only recently become a soccer power; that no team from a communist country (except Hungary, in 1954) has ever reached the World Cup finals or semifinals. Too much stereotyped planning destroys the creativity indispensable for effective soccer.

Soccer has never taken hold in the United States partly because neither a national team nor a national style has been encouraged. Still, as an unreconstructed fan, I hope for another attempt to popularize the sport, perhaps by holding the next World Cup slated for the Western Hemisphere (1994) in this country.

On Pele

Heroes walk alone, but they become myths when they ennoble the lives and touch the hearts of all of us. For those who love soccer, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, generally known as Pele, is a hero.

Performance at a high level in any sport is to exceed the ordinary human scale. But Pele's performance transcended that of the ordinary star by as much as the star exceeds ordinary performance. He scored an average of a goal in every international game he played--the equivalent of a baseball player's hitting a home run in every World Series game over 15 years. Between 1956 and 1974, Pele scored a total of 1,220 goals--not unlike hitting an average of 70 home runs every year for a decade and a half.

While he played, Brazil won the World Cup, staged quadrennially, three times in 12 years. He scored five goals in a game six times, four goals 30 times and three goals 90 times. And he did so not aloofly or disdainfully--as do many modern stars--but with an infectious joy that caused even the teams over which he triumphed to share in his pleasure, for it is no disgrace to be defeated by a phenomenon defying emulation.

He was born across the mountains from the great coastal cities of Brazil, in the impoverished town of Tres Coracoes. Nicknamed Dico by his family, he was called Pele by soccer friends, a word whose origins escape him. Dico shined shoes until he was discovered at the age of 11 by one of the country's premier players, Waldemar de Brito. Four years later, De Brito brought Pele to Sao Paulo and declared to the disbelieving directors of the professional team in Santos, "This boy will be the greatest soccer player in the world." He was quickly legend. By the next season, he was the top scorer in his league. As the Times of London would later say, "How do you spell Pele? G-O-D." He has been known to stop war: both sides in Nigeria's civil war called a 48-hour cease-fire in 1967 so Pele could play an exhibition match in the capital of Lagos.

To understand Pele's role in soccer, some discussion of the nature of the game is necessary. No team sport evokes the same sort of primal, universal passion as soccer. During the World Cup, the matches of the national football teams impose television schedules on the rhythm of life. Last year I attended a dinner for leading members of the British establishment and distinguished guests from all over the world at the staid Spencer House in London. The hosts had the bad luck to have chosen the night of the match between England and Argentina--always a blood feud, compounded on this occasion by the memory of the Falklands crisis. The impeccable audience (or at least enough of it to influence the hosts) insisted that television sets be set up at strategic locations, during both the reception and the dinner. The match went into overtime and required a penalty shoot-out afterward, so the main speaker did not get to deliver his message until 11 p.m. And since England lost, the audience was not precisely in a mood for anything but mourning.

When France finally won the World Cup, Paris was paralyzed with joy for nearly 48 hours, Brazil by dejection for a similar period of time. I was in Brazil in 1962 when the national team won the World Cup in Chile. Everything stopped for two days while Rio celebrated a premature carnival.

There is no comparable phenomenon in the U.S. Our fans do not identify with their teams in such a way partly because American team sports are more cerebral and require a degree of skill that is beyond the reach of the layman. Baseball, for instance, requires a bundle of disparate skills: hitting a ball thrown at 90 m.p.h., catching a ball flying at the speed of a bullet, and throwing long distances with great accuracy. Football requires a different set of skills for each of its 11 positions. The U.S. spectator thus finds himself viewing two discrete events: what is actually taking place on the playing field and the translation of it into detailed and minute statistics. He wants his team to win, but he is also committed to the statistical triumph of the star he admires. The American sports hero is like Joe DiMaggio--a kind of Lone Ranger who walks in solitude beyond the reach of common experience, lifting us beyond ourselves.

Soccer is an altogether different sort of game. All 11 players must possess the same type of skills--especially in modern soccer, where the distinction between offensive and defensive players has dissolved. Being continuous, the game does not lend itself to being broken down into a series of component plays that, as in football or baseball, can be practiced. Baseball and football thrill by the perfection of their repetitions, soccer by the improvisation of solutions to ever changing strategic necessities. Soccer requires little equipment, other than a pair of shoes. Everybody believes he can play soccer. And it can be played by any number of players as a pickup game. Thus soccer outside North America is truly a game for the masses, which can identify with its passions, its sudden triumphs and its inevitable disillusionments. Baseball and football are an exaltation of the human experience; soccer is its incarnation.

Pele is therefore a different phenomenon from the baseball or football star. Soccer stars are dependent on their teams even while transcending them. To achieve mythic status as a soccer player is especially difficult because the peak performance is generally quite short--only the fewest players perform at the top of their game for more than five years. Incredibly, Pele performed at the highest level for 18 years, scoring 52 goals in 1973, his 17th year. Contemporary soccer superstars never reach even 50 goals a season. For Pele, who had thrice scored more than 100 goals a year, it signaled retirement.

The mythic status of Pele derives as well from the way he incarnated the character of Brazil's national team. Its style affirms that virtue without joy is a contradiction in terms. Its players are the most acrobatic, if not always the most proficient. Brazilian teams play with a contagious exuberance. When those yellow shirts go on the attack--which is most of the time--and their fans cheer to the intoxicating beat of samba bands, soccer becomes a ritual of fluidity and grace. In Pele's day, the Brazilians epitomized soccer as fantasy.

I saw Pele at his peak only once, at the final of the World Cup in 1970. Brazil's opponent was Italy, which played its tough defense coupled with sudden thrusts to tie the game 1-1, demoralizing the Brazilians. Italy could very easily have massed its defense even more, until its frantic opponent began making the mistakes that would encompass its ruin. But, led by Pele, Brazil paid no attention. Attacking as if the Italians were a practice team, the Brazilians ran them into the ground, 4-1.

I saw Pele a few times afterward, when he was playing for the New York Cosmos. He was no longer as fast, but he was as exuberant as ever. By then, Pele had become an institution. Most modern fans never saw him play, yet they somehow feel he is part of their lives. He made the transition from superstar to mythic figure.

Stimulating speech: Henry Kissinger's greatest hits

Some wit and wisdom from Dr. Kissinger.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.

Accept everything about yourself--I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end--no apologies, no regrets.

Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.

If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

No foreign policy--no matter how ingenious--has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.

The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.

The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.

The task of a leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that's why we didn't make it.

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

We are all the President's men.

We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

You can't make war in the middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace in the middle East without Syria.

Curling up with a good book: On China

Complete title: On China
Author: Henry Kissinger
Year published: 2011

Henry Kissinger is one of my all-time favorite statesmen. And not only because--like me--he loves soccer! Kissinger has been in the forefront of seismic world shifts over the last few decades, often times playing a vital role in creating and shaping a better future. In this book, he draws upon his extensive experience in diplomacy with the Chinese and offers his perspective on how this once sleepy, backwater country has grown into a world superpower--if not THE superpower. Interesting ready and lots to think about. The following review was written by Max Frankel, who covered Kissinger's historic trip to China in 1972 with president Richard Nixon, and was originally published in the New York Times on May 13.

Henry Kissinger was not only the first official American emissary to Communist China, he persisted in his brokerage with more than 50 trips over four decades, spanning the careers of seven leaders on each side. Diplomatically speaking, he owns the franchise; and with “On China,” as he approaches 88, he reflects on his remarkable run.

To the degree that Washington and Beijing now understand each other, it is in good measure because Kissinger has been assiduously translating for both sides, discerning meaning in everything from elliptical jokes to temper tantrums. At every juncture, he has been striving to find “strategic concepts” that could be made to prevail over a history of conflict, mutual grievance and fear. As President Nixon’s national security adviser, then secretary of state for Nixon and Gerald Ford, and since 1977 as a private interlocutor extraordinaire, Kissinger has been unwaveringly committed to surmounting what he considers the legitimate Chinese resentment of American interference in their internal affairs and Americans’ distaste for China’s brutal suppression of ethnic, religious and political dissent.

The surprise buried in his lumbering review of Sino-American relations is that the much ballyhooed Nixon-Kissinger journeys to China in 1971-72 turned out to have been the easy part. “That China and the United States would find a way to come together was inevitable given the necessities of the time,” he writes. “It would have happened sooner or later whatever the leadership in either country.” Both nations were exhausted from war (Vietnam, clashes on the Soviet border) and domestic strife (antiwar protests in Nixon’s case, the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s). Both were determined to resist Soviet advances and so could quickly agree to make common cause. The menace of Moscow took the leaders’ minds off confrontations in Vietnam and Taiwan and quelled their ritual denunciations, whether of international imperialism or Communism. They decided that the adversary of my adversary was my pal, and for more than a decade that was fruitfully that.

But that was a different time. China finally escaped from Mao Zedong’s mad doctrine of perpetual revolution and from the enfeebling nostrums of central planning; it became an industrial powerhouse. The Soviet Union and its empire collapsed. And the United States, feeling supreme, began promoting democracy with missionary zeal even as it grew dangerously addicted to foreign oil, goods and credit. The radical shift in the balance of power turned China and the United States into mutually dependent economic giants, but it left them without an overarching strategic design of partnership.

It is to demonstrate the need for such a design that Kissinger reviews the ups and downs of Sino-American relations, reaching even into ancient Chinese history to define national characteristics. (He finds it apt that the Chinese like to play “wei qi,” or “go,” a protracted game of encirclement while we play chess, looking for control of the center and total victory.) Kissinger draws heavily on much recent scholarship and on notes of his trips to Beijing to celebrate the pragmatism of Mao’s successors. He says they are content to remain within their restored historic frontiers, willing to await a peaceful reunion with Taiwan, and most determined to continue their remarkable economic growth and to eradicate China’s still widespread poverty. He is less confident about America’s capacity to sustain a steady foreign policy, noting that “the perpetual psychodrama of democratic transitions” is a constant invitation to other nations to “hedge their bets” on us.

As students of Kissinger well know, he has long considered democracy to be a burden on statecraft — both the clamor of democracy within the United States and our agitations for democracy in other lands.

He recalls yet again his agonies in office in the 1970s, when he thought that American demonstrations during the Vietnam War could have misled Mao into believing that a “genuine world revolution” was at hand. He argues that the “destruction” of Nixon in the Watergate crisis, the withdrawal of Congressional support for Vietnam, new curbs on presidential war powers and the “hemorrhaging” of intelligence secrets all combined to undermine the quasi alliance with China, making America appear ineffectual against the Soviets. He is glad that Jimmy Carter did not let his human rights concerns upset relations with China and that Ronald Reagan’s cheerful personality overcame the “almost incomprehensible contradictions” of his dealings with Beijing even as he promoted the idea of an independent Taiwan.

The severest test of the quasi alliance, of course, was the brutal suppression of democratic strivings in Tiananmen Square in 1989. That violent crackdown also tested Kissinger’s tolerance for the assertion of American values in foreign relations.

Looking back, he believes everything depends on circumstances: “There are instances of violations of human rights so egregious,” he writes, “that it is impossible to conceive of benefit in a continuing relationship; for example, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the genocide in Rwanda. Since public pressure shades either into regime change or a kind of abdication, it is difficult to apply to countries with which a continuous relationship is important for American security. This is especially the case with China, so imbued with the memory of humiliating intervention by Western societies.”

And so Kissinger admires the way President George H. W. Bush, “with skill and elegance,” walked the “tightrope” of punishing China with sanctions after Tiananmen while simultaneously apologizing with private letters and special emissaries. President Bill Clinton tried applying pressure for a time, Kissinger notes, but was shown no gratitude when he wisely relented; the Chinese “did not view the removal of a unilateral threat as a concession, and they were extraordinarily touchy regarding any hint of intervention in their domestic affairs.” And President George W. Bush, despite his “freedom agenda,” earns Kissinger’s praise for overcoming “the historic ambivalence between America’s missionary and pragmatic approaches,” by means of “a sensible balance of strategic priorities.”

If America’s preference for democratic governance is made the main condition for progress on other issues with China, Kissinger concludes, “deadlock is inevitable.” Those who battle to spread American values deserve respect. “But foreign policy must define means as well as objectives, and if the means employed grow beyond the tolerance of the international framework or of a relationship considered essential for national security, a choice must be made.” That choice “cannot be fudged,” he insists, even as he attempts to protect his flanks with a fudge of his own: “The best outcome in the American debate would be to combine the two approaches: for the idealists to recognize that principles need to be implemented over time and hence must be occasionally adjusted to circumstance; and for the ‘realists’ to accept that values have their own reality and must be built into operational policies.”

Still, in the end, Kissinger votes for national security über alles. Scattered through his history are tributes to American values and commitments to human dignity, which may indeed sometimes drive our policies beyond calculations of the national interest. Exactly that happened, in fact, after “On China” went to press, when President Obama ventured into Libya. Kissinger was perhaps surprised when that humanitarian intervention and bid for regime change failed to evoke a Chinese veto at the United Nations. But in Asia now more than Europe, he argues, “sovereignty is considered paramount,” and any attempt “from the outside” to alter China’s domestic structure “is likely to involve vast unintended consequences.” Besides, as he used to insist while practicing realpolitik in Washington, the cause of peace is also a moral pursuit.

This central theme of Kissinger’s experience and counsel must be distilled from the sometimes ­meandering and largely familiar history he tells in “On China.” Only in its last pages does he discuss the essential question of future Sino-American relations: With no common enemy to bind them, what will keep the peace and promote collaboration and trust between the world’s major ­powers?

Kissinger addresses this question by looking to the past, a memorandum written by a senior official of the British Foreign Office, Eyre Crowe, in 1907. Crowe argued that it was in Germany’s interest to “build as powerful a navy as she can afford” and that this would itself lead to “objective” conflict with the British Empire, no matter what German diplomats said or did. There is today a “Crowe school of thought” in the United States, Kissinger observes, which sees China’s rise “as incompatible with America’s position in the Pacific” and therefore best met with pre-emptively hostile policies. He perceives growing anxieties in both societies and fears they are exacerbated by Americans who claim that democracy in China is a prerequisite for a trusting relationship. He warns that the implied next cold war would arrest progress in both nations and cause them to “analyze themselves into self-fulfilling prophecies” when in reality their main competition is more likely to be economic than military.

Indulging his habitual preference for diplomatic architecture, Kissinger insists that the common interests the two powers share should make possible a “co-evolution” to “a more comprehensive ­framework.” He envisions wise leaders creating a “Pacific community” comparable to the Atlantic community that America has achieved with Europe. All Asian nations would then participate in a system perceived as a joint endeavor rather than a contest of rival Chinese and American blocs. And leaders on both Pacific coasts would be obliged to “establish a tradition of consultation and mutual respect,” making a shared world order “an expression of parallel national aspirations.”

That was indeed the mission of the very first Kissinger journey to Beijing. And while he does not quite say so, he invests his hopes in a concert of nations represented, of course, by multiple Kissingers.

Stimulating speech: Winston Churchill's greatest hits

No fan of Clement Atlee then--and snarky to the ladies as well--but Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) certainly had a way with words. Whether or not you agree with his politics, the man did know how to turn a phrase and in this era of cookie-cutter, sound-bite spouting leaders, we could use a dose of Churchillian originality and verve.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

There is no such thing as a good tax.

Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”

Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.”

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.

If you are going to go through hell, keep going.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

A sheep in sheep’s clothing. (on Clement Atlee)

A modest man, who has much to be modest about. (on Clement Atlee)

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. (from "The Sinews of Peace" speech, given at Westminster College, Fulton, Mo., March 5, 1945)

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

You ask, What is our policy? I will say; “It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.” You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory--victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, "this was their finest hour."