The Strategist Conception and conjecture in statecraft: insights from Henry Kissinger

Conception and conjecture in statecraft: insights from Henry Kissinger

Posted By Michael Pezzullo on August 20, 2024 @ 06:00

Henry Kissinger made his name in the 1950s as a scholar of ‘statesmen’, always using the masculine noun. He was especially interested in the intellectual ‘conceptions’ that guide the actions of statesmen, and how they have to use ‘conjecture’ in the absence of certainty.

Before he was appointed in January 1969 to be the United States national security adviser, Kissinger wrote a number of iconoclastic papers that still speak to us today. Thanks to Niall Ferguson’s biography, Kissinger 1923-1968: The Idealist (2015), we have been reintroduced to those papers. While they should be seen for what they are—the thoughts of a brilliant but self-regarding intellectual—they nonetheless contain enduring insights on statecraft and policymaking.

Among the insights relevant today is that the essence of 'statesmanship’ is to be found in having the courage and the character to take consequential decisions and act boldly, when opportunities and threats are of necessity only incompletely glimpsed, and when probabilities and consequences cannot be calculated precisely. The ultimate test of such statesmanship is to grapple with the prospect of war—both deterring it and being ready for it—and to persuade the public of the conception on which the nation’s grand strategy is founded.

The system that empowers such a statesman needs to support this conjectural thinking and the statesman’s ability to communicate the possible consequences—both of action and inaction—to the public. Bureaucracy, for Kissinger, leads to decisions being avoided until a crisis, or some other imperative, forces an issue, when events have largely removed ambiguity. Such crisis is also the moment when the scope for creative action is certain to be at a minimum.

When the scope for creative action is greatest, by contrast, bureaucracies are typically anxious that knowledge upon which to base action is minimal, or ambiguous. As a result, they are hidebound and inert. When relevant knowledge becomes available to a standard that is deemed to be acceptable to a risk-averse bureaucracy, the capacity of the statesman to affect events is usually at a minimum.

For Kissinger, the best statecraft involves acting successfully in accordance with a long term conception. This means not just recognising the trends of the times, but the act of conceiving an optimal world order, and then harnessing the trends of the times in the pursuit of that conception. For Kissinger, thought and action has to be integrated. That is why, for him, the term ‘conception’ means, simultaneously, the mind’s capacity to conceive and imagine; the purposive act of devising a design; and the resultant idea that can both explain a reality and inform actions within that reality, such as the idea of a balance of power.

However, while Kissinger lauded the virtuosity of the statesman who is able to turn ideas into action, he also understood that they are nonetheless prisoners of their time. This is especially so in relation to the ‘problem of politics’, as Kissinger termed it. Statesmen are always political leaders, and as such are constrained by the prevailing domestic structure of politics. As politicians, their focus, especially in modern democracies, is on the domestic needs and aspirations of their citizens, who hold the ultimate power over their ability to function—namely, being able to deny them office. Issues of statecraft typically hold no interest for parochially minded citizens, who prefer tranquillity over foreign entanglements. The politician-as-statesman who outruns the people will fail in achieving a domestic consensus, however wise their policies. Kissinger was, of course, writing during the Vietnam War.

Given their personal traits (always seeking political power, ever calculating their electoral interests), politicians are too often inclined to use known methods—those they use to achieve high office—when they turn their hand to statecraft. Such methods are, however, often ill-suited for this purpose. Domestic levers and tools, and domestic experience, are not applicable when dealing with international situations, which are often far removed from the typical politician’s expertise and knowledge.

The civic consciousness of the politician—which Kissinger saw in the lawyers and businesspeople who went into government service in the 1950s and 1960s, and which today might also be seen in those who go into national politics through university politics, local government, community activism, and so on—is often ill-suited to comprehending and acting in the world of diplomacy, alliances, and war. Here, completely different conceptions are required.

The politician, who should be no stranger to making difficult decisions, finds the contingency of statecraft especially challenging and unnerving. Here success depends on making conjectural estimates about a future in the absence of comprehensive data, which are more readily available in domestic policy areas. For instance, deterrence aims to cause something not to happen. Its success can only be measured conjecturally, and over a longer time horizon than the typical span of political achievement.

We come here to the second of Kissinger’s key notions, ‘conjecture’. Conjecture requires an ability and willingness to project beyond what is known, with often very little to guide the statesman, apart from convictions, common sense, and historical perspective. The problem of conjecture means that actions have to be geared to assessments that cannot be proved when they are made.

In this regard, Kissinger was scathing of bureaucracies, and especially the US departments and agencies of the 1950s and 1960s. Bureaucracies typically resist conjecture. Decisions that need to be made do not typically get considered until they appear as an administrative imperative. Perhaps departments and agencies cannot agree, major budget or procurement decisions have to be taken, international visits or meetings loom, and so on. Statecraft, however, requires conjecture about the future, and the consideration of hypothetical cases. Administrators are too busy with actual cases to devote time to what they consider to be hypothetical cases. They tolerate policy planning only insofar as it has no practical consequence. Studying a policy problem at lower organisational levels becomes a substitute for coming to grips with it.

Moreover, the workload in managing the bureaucratic machine means that even when the most profound issues are surfaced, they are reduced to brief, focused discussions in committees that are overly reliant on the consideration of succinct papers and presentations, which inevitably brings a reductive approach to inherently complex problems. (Kissinger wrote presciently about this problem in 1959.)

Kissinger was especially scathing of policymaking-by-committee. In any committee process, the quest for consensus becomes the test of the validity of ideas. Committees act as consumers of ideas rather than creators of them. Policymaking-by-committee involves the distillation of differences that are finely balanced, where the merits seem fairly even. However, this is likely to mean that bolder ideas have already been discarded before the commencement of the committee stage proper, because when consensus, conformity, and collegiality are privileged as an absolute value, boldness of conception, risk-taking, and daring are filtered out, like the outlier scores of judges in a sporting competition. Policy thus becomes an averaging activity, on the assumption that the correct course is likely to be found in the moderation of already moderated viewpoints.

The bureaucrat is a neutral personality in this process, neither brimming with ideas, nor given to boldness of action. When policymaking becomes an administrative process—rather than a creative one, characterised by virtuosity—it can only move at the pace of the conversation. The worst of all possible worlds is thus achieved. The significance of issues is not appreciated until it is too late. Then events force decisions to be hurriedly taken under pressure, which extinguishes the opportunity for creative action.

Unsurprisingly, Kissinger thought that ‘the intellectual’ could assist. Whereas bureaucracy involves projecting the familiar into the future, rather than risking new departures, the intellectual can provide ‘boldness of conception’, through subject mastery, analysis, conceptual frameworks, analogies from history, and so on—all of which are likely to be more useful than the inert thinking of the bureaucracy. He was concerned, however, that once drawn in—and typically too late in the process—intellectuals could find themselves burdened by having to operate at the hurried pace of executive action, which by that stage is often meaningless and ineffectual. The intellectual’s task is to provide creative perspectives, without becoming as harassed as those they advise, while at the same time avoiding being entranced by an academic quest for universality, which leads to dogmatism in the gritty and parochial world of imperfect policy choices. They have to be brilliant and practical, at the same time.

Looking back on these insights, we can appreciate their force without accepting them in full. Not all committees make, or recommend, bad decisions. Not all brilliant mavericks are correct. There are many bureaucrats who, when enabled and supported, are able to engage in both bold thinking and daring action. There is an intrinsic value in the process of orderly and collective deliberation, even where some participants are engaged uncritically, perhaps in the pursuit of the sectional interests of their departments. A leadership style that is cautious, prudent, analytical, and geared to the moderation of ideas and policies has its place, if only to temper and head off the unforeseen and unintended consequences of bold conceptions. Think here of Churchill and the Dardanelles campaign of 1915.

The more important issue, and the challenge at the core of Kissinger’s critique of the feckless politician and the inert bureaucrat, is the question of how best to gear the decision process such that effective action can be taken conjecturally ahead of time—that is, when still more analysis, and more bureaucratic steps and meetings, would not add to the prospects of bettering the outcome and might even open the door to worse.

Kissinger’s last book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy (2022), written after a lifetime of engagement with these issues, provides a more rounded view than the papers that he wrote before he went into the arena himself in January 1969. In his compelling portraits of Adenauer, de Gaulle, Nixon, Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Thatcher, he focused on the ‘courage’ that they displayed in making bold and daring decisions, and the traits of ‘character’ that enabled them to hold to difficult courses of action.

Grappling with the issue of war is perhaps the greatest test of the politician as ‘statesman’—that is, acting to avoid war without compromising vital national interests, while being prepared, if required, to fight one with resolve. Few come equipped for this test with the mettle of Churchill, de Gaulle, or Eisenhower—all of whom were, of course, soldiers. In the Australian context, Curtin is considered to be someone who met the test of wartime leadership. However, his decision space was significantly constrained. Australia was marginalised as the US war machine sprang into action after the attack on Pearl Harbor. MacArthur treated Curtin with respect, and accommodated his concerns, but not to the point of impairing the US campaign in the Pacific.

Further, while venerated as a symbol of an independent military action in the defence of Australia, the Battle for Kokoda, properly understood, was in fact a heroic action in a subsidiary area of operation in a wider US-led theatre-wide war. As David Horner has shown in his masterful account, The War Game: Australian War Leadership from Gallipoli to Iraq (2022), Australian strategic and war leadership has always been a function of alliance constructs and imperatives. In the main, Australian politicians have had to make difficult and solemn decisions about whether to go to wars that were being conducted by others, and to what level of commitment.

Australian political leaders have never been tested in the way that a modern-day war in the Indo-Pacific might yet test the nation. While the Second World War comes closest, its lessons are principally concerned with what happened when a nation in denial, as Australia was from at least 1937, had to scramble suddenly to ready itself for a foreseeable war without having an opportunity to contribute to allied strategic decision-making, much less being able to influence it. While the times do not call, yet at least, for a Churchill or a de Gaulle, they certainly cry out for more than the inert leadership that was demonstrated by the Lyons government in 1937 when, in the face of the formation of the Axis, and Imperial Japan’s full-scale invasion of China, too little was done while there was still time. Today, were a Churchill or a de Gaulle to stride onto the national stage, a puzzled and bemused population would wonder what the spectacle was all about. Some would protest at the beating of the ‘drums of war’. However, having a Joseph Lyons on the stage would be far worse.

Drawing on Kissinger’s lifetime of insights, how might the dilemma be navigated? How best do we sensibly prepare for a war, while lessening its risk and, in doing so, avoid both the performative affectation that would be involved in channelling Churchill or de Gaulle on the one hand, or the listless inertia of Lyons on the other?

Kissinger’s insights into statecraft and policymaking, and specifically conjecture and conception, can assist. Leaden bureaucratic processes have to be cast aside, for the reasons that Kissinger dissected. Today’s politicians will need to display the courage and character of the successful ‘statesmen’ of the past. This will involve devoting a great deal of time to thinking conjecturally about the most consequential strategic problem of the age—the possibility of war in the Indo-Pacific. Hypothetical cases will need to be considered, using wargaming techniques and simulated decision exercises. Urgent decisions will need to be taken on how to best prepare for war, while working at the same time to lessen its risk. Such decisions will have to be based on assessments that could not be proved, for now. Intellectuals could have great impact here, as the defence intellectuals of the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre had in the 1970s and 1980s.

These decisions will need to be carefully explained by the government, and articulated with clarity—not through a patchwork of meaningless euphemisms to be found in government talking points. This could be done with proper regard to military secrecy. Such purposeful public explanation would maintain optionality, leverage and ambiguity, where this suited our interests. Having a clear conception of Australia’s grand strategy would be critically important in this process. Current defence and foreign policy constructs are too rooted in earlier conceptions such as defence self-reliance, or ‘security in Asia’.

One aspect of Australia’s strategic dilemma—and apparent response—especially cries out for the touch of a modern Kissinger, namely, what is the conception of how Australia sees US military power being projected from and through its territory? Future historians will have to reconstruct a remarkable change through which Australia is being transformed, in fits and starts, into a secure operating base for US military power projection against China. This transition from the declared policy of defence self-reliance to one of alliance-based power projection and, potentially, warfighting is as extraordinary in its steady realisation as it is breathtaking in its lack of transparency.

Not that the elements have been withheld from the public. Since 2014, there has been a steady stream of bare announcements regarding initiatives to enable the US to operate militarily from or through Australia, across sea, land and air. What would not be clear to future historians from those announcements was the extent to which this was done purposefully, according to a clear conception. Those historians, working with the records, might—like archaeologists of knowledge—have to discover a conception, if it existed.

US Congressman Michael McCaul is not in doubt. He told The Weekend Australian (17 August 2024) that Australia has become ‘the central base of operations’ for deterrence of China militarily. Even if one disagrees strongly with him on the policy merits of this change, one can only agree with Paul Keating that this is being done without adequate debate. On questions such as the purpose of providing a base for these US forces or, relatedly, how the ANZUS Treaty might apply in the event of attacks on US forces in the ‘Pacific Area’—a term that is used, but not defined, in the Treaty—there have been no meaningful ministerial statements in the Parliament. With every AUSMIN communique, yet more building blocks of this new approach are announced. What is the underlying conception? We are not told.

Bringing the public along in relation to fundamental changes in the character of a military alliance is crucial, and especially so when there is no obvious threatening neighbour—something that focuses the mind in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Israel, Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states, Finland, Sweden, and elsewhere. For many Australians, local defence and an avoidance of distant entanglements would make a great deal of sense. The rationale for military alliances, and their evolving character, have to be explained, especially when an alliance seeks to achieve strategic effects over vast, oceanic distances, as distinct from providing protection against a threatening neighbour, of which Australia has none.

No matter how wise the policy, public acceptance is crucial, and never more so than when a nation faces the prospect of war. Given the decline in historical knowledge, the atomising effects of technology, the fragmentation of the media, and what Kissinger termed the ‘impugning’ effect of identity politics—which undermines national self-perception—public discussion is becoming increasingly vacuous, and unconcerned, in meaningful ways, with substantive issues.

Unless courage and character are shown by our ‘statesmen’ in addressing the related issues of a possible war in the Indo-Pacific, and a changing US alliance, an anxious Australian public—unconvinced by vacuous euphemisms, and apprehensive about a faraway war—might one day voice its opposition to Australia’s contributing to the military deterrence of China.

No matter how brilliant their conjectures and conceptions, or how wise their policies, the ‘statesman’ cannot outrun the people.

Michael Pezzullo was a deputy secretary of defence and the lead author of the 2009 Defence White Paper. He was secretary of the Department of Home Affairs from 2017 to 2023.

First image shows Henry Kissinger at his first news conference as Secretary of State in 1973.

Second image shows General Charles De Gaulle reviewing free French commando unit during Bastille Day in London, 1942.

Third image shows Prime Minister Joseph Lyons in 1937.

Photos from Getty Images.

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