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(回答先: キッシンジャー氏、米紙に寄稿 自立傾向強める日本[韋駄天-37758] 投稿者 乃依 日時 2004 年 7 月 12 日 17:28:39)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040704/news_lz1e4kiss.html
Center of gravity shifts in international affairs
By Henry A. Kissinger
July 4, 2004
When the history of these times is written, it may well be that the headlines of the day ? Iraq and the controversies it has aroused ? will pale in comparison to other tectonic international upheavals that mark our period.
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The center of gravity of world affairs is moving to the Pacific, and almost all major actors on the international stage are defining new roles for themselves.
That transformation is about concepts as much as about power. Relations with Europe are an example. Differences over Iraq are serious and substantive ? even as both sides are seeking to narrow the gap. But a more fundamental cause is structural and even philosophical: the progressive erosion of the European nation state, which has been the foundation of international politics and the focus of political loyalties since the 17th century. European leaders spend more time on issues of European unification than any other. And these issues involve not traditional diplomacy but highly esoteric constitutional arrangements. Because the historic rivalries of Europe have been civilized into a domestic consensus, European diplomats seek to apply their new domestic experience in the international arena. They insist that resort to military force is legitimate only if sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council.
By contrast, America remains a traditional nation state, insistent on sovereign freedom of action. Europe, even as it embraces American pop culture, almost subconsciously edges towards identifying itself politically with what is not American. In the absence of an as-yet-to-be defined European national interest, these non-state attitudes towards international relations are becoming deeply embedded in European public opinion.
Paradoxically, the structural estrangement of America from Europe is taking place at the moment when the center of gravity of international politics is shifting to Asia, where relations have been far less confrontational.
Countries like Russia, China, Japan and India still view the nation as does the United States and as did European states prior to World War II. To them, geopolitics is not anathema; it is the basis of their internal analysis and their external actions. The concept of national interest still rallies public and leadership opinion. The balance of power affects their calculations, notably in their relations with each other.
Because their perceptions of their national interest are so comparable to ours, Russia, China, India and Japan have had far less fractious relations with America than some European allies. Though they reject what they consider hegemonical aspects of American policy, they do so on a case-by-case basis via traditional diplomacy and generally prefer a strategic dialogue to a test of will. To these countries, Iraq is not a litmus of American moral fitness to lead but of American endurance in pursuit of strategic insights. It affects their judgment about America's reliability as a partner and our capacity to achieve our goals. For each of these countries has an interest, at a minimum, in averting an American defeat in Iraq: India because of its large Muslim population; Russia because of its fear of turmoil in its southern flank abutting the Middle East; Japan because of its continued stake in a strong America and the American alliance during its period of transition; China because it believes that a partnership with America is the best road to a decade of stability.
All the countries involved are redefining their identities. Russia, returned to frontiers it has not known since Peter the Great, finds decolonization involving countries at its borders particularly painful. To abandon Ukraine, whence the Orthodox religion came to Russia, is a far more rending step for Moscow than it was for European countries to abandon their overseas colonies. To give up imperial rule and rely on cooperative relationships runs counter to Russian historical experience. Russians are bound to ask themselves the nagging question: if we are not an empire, what are we?
China's emergence as a great power ? and a potential superpower ? is already a principal element in shifting the international center of gravity to Asia. China seems to have made a decision for an extended period of cooperation. The opportunity must be used to lift the relationship above the tactical and to encourage in a new generation of leaders a sense of compatibility between American and Chinese long-range purposes.
The issue of nuclear weapons in North Korea is a good example of the need for a long-range approach. On one level, it has been treated as an arms control problem caused by a rogue state and has therefore been confined to North Korean-American issues. But a fundamental solution must go deeper. It requires a Chinese-American understanding regarding the political evolution of Northeast Asia, including the future of North Korea, the pace of Korean unification and nuclear restraint in Northeast Asia. This is not a task to be brought to a conclusion at the Assistant Secretary level of the six-party talks in Beijing.
Perhaps the most complex transition is taking place in Japan. For half a century after its defeat in World War II, Japan, sheltered under a bilateral security treaty with the United States, concentrated with characteristic self-discipline on its economic recovery and return to political respectability.
For the first time in its millennia-old history, Japan subordinated its foreign policy to another country. As its international environment is in rapid transition, Japan tenaciously, subtly, indirectly, is systematically widening the margin of action available to it. Beyond the war on terrorism, Japan is in the process of adapting its role as an American auxiliary and is preparing to enter the international arena as a principal ? a challenge and also an opportunity for America. The North Korean challenge has accelerated this process.
The emergence of India into great power status is one of the principal events of the next decade. This is all the more true because the geographic area of most intense interest for India ? the Muslim world and Central Asia ? coincides with a major concern of the United States, and the interests of the two countries run parallel there in important respects.
Since the days of the British Empire, India has resisted the emergence of a dominant outside power in the arc between Singapore and Aden. With its Muslim population of 150 million which, in a generation will exceed 300 million, India has a greater stake than almost any other country that the outcome of the war in Iraq not provide an impetus to radical Islam.
Thus, the global scene is more fluid than it has been for centuries. America's task is to contribute to shaping this ferment which was years in the making and will require perhaps decades to crystallize. American diplomacy is asked to bring about the elements of a new world order much as it successfully did in the decade immediately following World War II.
Unlike Europe, the Asian countries discussed here march to a different drummer. The nations involved will judge our relevance to their concerns by the outcome of Iraq. Somewhat contradictorily, concern over American hegemonical power may tempt these countries to explore options for constraints on American power, though for motives the opposite of those of Europe ? as an exercise, not of moral or judicial principles, but of the balance of power. American policy needs to be sensitive to these attitudes.
American power is a fact of life; but the art of diplomacy is to translate power into consensus.
Kissinger is a former secretary of state and adviser to several presidents.
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