could you could say orientalist view of of the middle east and yet. there was enough of the kind of realist power dynamics. in the region that his approach actually could work in terms of establishing a stable order, but there were several problems with it and you allude to them. the first is that in a in his hierarchical. approach to international order it was the big powers that counted and the small powers that did not and the only way that the small palace could count was if they disrupted. the order which most of them didn't have the power to do and even if they did normally the large powers would come together and squelch them. so for the palestinians he regarded as a as a problem that

needed to be addressed because they were creating some kind of static. they murdered two american diplomats in the sudan on his watch so he opened a channel to them. through the cia. to the hassan brothers you remember them colored and honey? o hassan? and he had at this dialogue on the side. but it wasn't too advanced palestinian cause it was to calm them down and to keep him quiet while he went off and and introduced his process and and he saw the palestinians as a problem for israel and jordan to take care of. similarly jordan let alone lebanon. really didn't didn't count in the balance of power given this more. power status and even though he liked the king that's a quote. i like the king.

he didn't feel that he should pay much attention to the king's concerns because they didn't really matter compared to egypt with its size and power and role in the arab world if you took egypt out of the conflict with israel, which was his plan. then you could stabilize the region effectively make war between our the arab states and israel irrelevant no longer operational. and if you could get syria the beating part heart of panera's arabism to legitimize. that process of taking egypt out of the conflict. then you could stabilize it and as for the rest, well palestinians that was israel's problem and he kept on warning the israelites do a deal with jordan. otherwise you'll end up with the

plo. he understood exactly the dynamic. but he it wasn't important enough for him and any totally israelis to deal with jordan sort it out. but he was never prepared to invest in which as i point out in the book was i believe a mistake a product precisely of his approach. that he missed the opportunity. to deal with the palestinian issue in a jordanian context he negotiated. disengagement agreements between israel and egypt between israel and syria he had the opportunity to negotiate one between israel and jordan which would have put the king back into the west bank in a limited way, but it would have given him a position on the west bank and and responsibility for the palestinians at a time when the plo was in no position to prevent that from happening. and kissinger simply he saw the

opportunity at a moment there. he kind of was attracted to it. but as soon as they'll be a family the egyptian foreign minister came to washington and said so that once another deal off he went across rub in one of the deal with egypt as well, but that that as a consequence. and i real opportunity i think was missed the last opportunity. as we can see historically to put the palestinian issue into a jordanian context. i mean a couple of reflections / questions one is kind of his not great power but regional great powers that say, you know regional great power approach that he took to create deterrence and balance of power and some kind of stability among the major states of the region you could argue, you know has somewhat worked, you know, there

have been no major state to state wars since well, iran, iraq war was not exactly in his purview was in his thing but the last really state to state war was back in 1973. and today really no major arab states are war with israel or israel with them. iran is in a state of belligerence, but has never had a war with israel and as unlikely ever to have a war with israel so you could say at that level. this strategy worked made sense still prevails in a certain way. obviously a lot has changed. but he did not. maybe take a count of two things one is you know this non-state actors. i mean it started with a stateless people than the plo and now you have a whole bunch of obviously groups affiliated in many different ways at the middle east is no longer a zone simply of states. that you have to worry about and i wouldn't necessarily say that

that is a consequence of a certain approach but it is interesting that it's the most non-state actor written region of the world. and secondly that is a that he said the us on a course. including on the west bank which as you say i mean really did not take the palestinian issue itself into consideration and enabled and brought about for the palestinians and for israel and for the region because this is you know, it radiates. a a intractable conundrum problem which almost has no solution but is also not. it's not well, it's not it will continue to erupt it erupt every few years, but that too is a consequence of something. he said in motion and even you know when you discuss how we thought about he thought about the jordanian option. but even in the book you say the

palestinians never thought that jordanian option was an option for them. so yeah, i mean, what are your reflections about sort of those well well it's true. it's not that he ignore the palestinian problem. as i said, he regarded it as a as a problem not worthy of his attention us. yeah. yeah was israel and jordan that needed to deal with the problem. and he will say he won the israelis he better deal with jordan oil. you'll end up dealing with the plr. but you know later on in his life. he was quite gratified that when rabin came around to dealing with the palestinian. he adopted a kissingerie an approach. which was kissing just approach was always because he was skeptical of jumping an end of conflict. agreement it was always gradual and incremental he called it step by step diplomacy.

and that's what he did with egypt to two steps in syria one step. and and then he was planning a third step with with egypt bandwidth syria and with jordan actually in his last year. that would have involved moving to non belligerency in exchange more territorial withdrawals by israel. so the first point is territorial withdrawal from arab occupied territory was always a fundamental principle of his process. that's what lubricated the process. and so when robin came forward with the oslo accords, it was a three-phase step-by-step incremental approach involving yielding territory through the palestinians in the west bank and gaza. and no defined endgame or outcome. that was to be negotiated later and rub in was quick to say there are no sacred time tables

here. so it was kind of ironical. because kissinger had a knockdown drag out fight with rubbin as i detailed in the book in 1975 when he was trying to get rubbed in to give up the strategic passes in sinai and the oil fields given back to it sadat so that they could have this second second interim agreement. and robin was insisting in those days on a ben game he wanted. peace. and kissing just said, you know, it's not worth having. countries can commit to base and they go back to war. so so, you know, let's not worry about that. but robin at that point was insistent. the irony is kissinger brought him around when it came to dealing with the palestinians. he adopted kissinger's gradual step-by-step approach and the ultimate iron. is that way when i include me in

this the united states under bill clinton? did not appreciate. kissingers step by step gradual approach so that when eric barack newly elected came to washington. and said to clinton, let's end this conflict in your last year in office and my first year. let's go to camp david. let's take our up there and let's end this country. clinton went for it and his aids did not argue against it. including me we thought we could somehow end the conflict. kissinger would have never gone from would have accepted but arafat was not ready. and therefore to try to push him to it would only lead to a disaster. and and you know i said to him in my last interview with him.

did he ever regret? not going for the peace treaty with egypt after all jimmy carter negotiated the israel egypt. peace treaty two years after kissinger left office, and he had laid all the groundwork for it. and as i show in the book there were plenty of indications that seduct and rugby and were ready. but kissinger wasn't as i said, did you ever regret it? and he said no. said because i always feared that if i pushed it too hard. i would break it. and it was like a light bulb going off in my head was like, yes, exactly. that's what we did. we pushed it too hard and we broke. yeah, it's very very interesting stuff. i mean when i'm back up a couple of elements, i mean he does again have a very sort of 19th century. a view and i think you just mentioned it in part of his approach to things that peace is just you know, the spaces

between war it's just a few years where there is a war and then then you fall back into war which was kind of the the reality in the 19th and 18th and 17th centuries. but it is it is no longer the way states actually behave. in the last, you know post-war certainly late 20th early 21st, there have been no major state to state wars. you know major one since world war ii again. this is something steven pinker gets into in great detail, and i think very seriously that it is it is not the case that states are sort of perpetually at war and just try to keep them out of war for for a period of time and that's that's the objective that would you know modern economics and integration and investment and trade and so on things are quite different. i just want to kind of operant put that in parentheses, but in his own approach, which you

which you described which is obviously very brilliant their elements. of buying time which are very productive towards peace and probably contributed to the peace treaties in that carter eventually negotiated and others, which is that when states and societies are at war they can't jump directly from more to peace. they can't do it culturally values emotions trust. then you need to create a period of 10 20 30 40 years where there is no war. and then it changes the dynamics so that may be later down down the road. you can talk about these and i think this is very relevant even in recent conversations with friends in the middle east. these are the iran, you know, none of them. you know, they like peace with iran if iran would behave it. so, but they can't see it. they don't they don't see it happening, but they are trying to see if they can at least. i don't want to say coexist, but

maybe that is the word at least not to have war for a while and then maybe at a later date, you know, that will bring something better. but you also mentioned in the book. a more negative or a more white one what might see nefarious way of using time that kissinger used and you talked about it. which is buying time. it was in relation of his description of the policy towards the west bank that he promoted a didn't go for peace, but he went for a peace process. in order to buy time to enable israel to consolidate its hold on parts of the west bank which kissinger that were necessary for israel security that giving back the 67 borders was was not sustainable from his point of view for israel and that the buying time could also have other purposes. how would you unpack those two elements of time that were used? yeah. well several things i think he would.

probably if he would talking to your arab friends about what to do with iran. he would introduce the concept of a daytime with iran. just like he did with the soviet union and he would have no problem with that. he sees iran. as a great power. a great civilization the kind of became a revolutionary state. and in his terms, you know, it has to. decide whether it wants to be a revolution or wants to be a state. and until it decides and it's taking a lot longer than i think he expected until it decides. you know, you have to treat it as a revolutionary state and you have to contain it and deter. and then eventually if it's willing, i mean you have to see whether it's willing for dayton and i think he would see what the arabs are doing now by talking to the iranians to see whether there's a way to have a kind of motor city.

but his overall objective is to bring iran back into the community of states as a great regional power in its own. right and he has no problem with that. he's not interested in regime change. he doesn't believe it and maybe he believed it in chile because that was in america's fear of influence, but definitely not in the middle east is not into that. now the question of time is very interesting because i think it's important to understand what he was talking about and what he wasn't. time for him was important because he believed that peace would eventually come and you mentioned this. he had a cantian view that eventually there would be peace, but it would only come as a result of the exhaustion. of the powers in effect after trying everything else. they finally come to to accept that is the best option. and so that's the way he viewed it.

and he he couldn't convince israelis to give up territory for peace because as i said, he had a drawn distribute of peace. so instead he argued. that they should give up territory for time. time to exhaust the arabs so they would eventually come to accept israel. time to build israel's strength reduce its isolation. but not what you said not time to consolidate its hold on arab territory. it's true that he was against. forcing into our to the 67 lines but it's not so much that he regarded them as in defensible. but he regarded israel's unable to do that. at the time because of its weakness because of its domestic political circumstances and so on so he didn't want to try to push them to do something that

they couldn't do. in his opinion but it was not to consolidate the territory. that was the cruel irony of what happened. is that he was so successful in convincing them to accept this principle of territory for time that it became the foundational basis for their strategy. towards the conflict. and in the process of buying time, which they did very well over the years. they consolidated their grip over over the west bank. and and you know he ends up saying in his book on world order that israel will have to yield territory. otherwise it will consume its moral substance if it relies on naked force alone. so it's kind of quite clear that that he does not consider the west bank as something that israel needs to hold on to. rather it needs to give it up in

stages just like rubbing envisaged in the oslo process. so that when the palestinians are ready to accept israel israel can afford then to give up. to the west bank more or less, you know with minor adjustments mutually agreed swaps. no, thanks. yeah, that's an important clarification. i misunderstood that and thanks for the clarification. let me try to throw in some questions here from the audience again if you have questions put them on the q&a function or if you're on youtube send it by email to events. at mei.edu. let me ask a question from nirmal verma, which is already at area we were we were sort of present in which is here can kissinger's worldview and view of and all of that. and since you've talked to him

on and off recently, what would all of this mean for us policy today in the middle east? big question, but very relevant what with this injured do right. so first of all, it's it's very relevant i could just add. because like the period of history the kissinger was dealing with the united states is in a retrenchment mode. it's withdrawing from afghanistan and the broader middle east in the way that kissinger oversaw the withdrawal from southeast asia and the pull out from vietnam. it's also a time of domestic political turmoil back in kissinger's day. it was all about the impeachment of richard nixon and the turmoil of that caused internally. today, of course. it's about donald trump and division between the democrats and republicans. so there's a lot of similarities

in the circumstances. kissinger's approach and you mentioned it early on. when we talked about thoughtful conceptual time, there's always to start with the concept and the concept depends on the balance of power. so the first requirement he would have is to establish an equilibrium in the balance of power. try to stabilize the balance of power. and in that sense, i think he would look to whoever who are the friends the united states that we can support since we can no longer lead and dominate the order. we've got other things to deal with in china russia climate change etc. so let's get behind. a balance of power that that is supported by regional powers that are status quo powers, so that would be you know, the arab gulf states the sunny arab gulf states egypt, jordan and israel.

and and the overall approach would be as i said earlier to contain and deter iran. and to forge that kind of alliance, which is already basically there in a tacit way. and and support it and and that is i think the way would approach it in the case of palestinians. he would go back. to the route to the oslover chords, which by the way is the only agreement that's still stands between the israels and palestinians not withstanding the fact that it's been observed in the in a both sides, but you also chords provides for a gradual incremental approach. the israeli government is taking some steps economic rather than political not territorial. he would want to add a territorial dimension for the reasons. i already explained. and you know the third further redeployment. as provided for in the also records was never fulfilled.

so you could go back. and get to get get the israelis in the palestinians talking about that. that would be the kind of incremental territorial step which would give both sides greater confidence about where this process was leading. give the palestinians more control over parts of area c, which is under 60% of the west bank completely under israeli control at this point and try in that way with the economic steps of the government israeli government has taken to rebuild confidence and trust so that you can then approach the final status negotiations later on down the road. let me ask a question that is posed and link it to another one to go sort of both smaller and bigger on the smaller side. we have all these armed non-state actors. maybe there were very few of them when henry kissinger was an office, but obviously in the

middle east today, they dominate huge swabs of territory. some kind of belong to states or very close to states others. do not because maybe he didn't have the at the time having approach to that issue because they weren't maybe very prevalent. has he developed a view about how to deal with massive non-state actors that do not fit into his westphalian balance of state power. so that's only sort of more micro view and then a question from one of our participants here. he worked during the cold war where there was great power competition with the soviet union. that's very much part of his calculus. in the middle east policy as well. we are returning to a time where there is, you know research in russia. there's a china looming and that is relevant to the middle east.

so how would he or how would you kind of being a kissinger whisperer attempt? how do you deal with the smaller groups, you know like that are not states and and the you know the big the big great powers which are not the soviet union. but they're they're a big challenge just to the us at least in the region. how do you think that fit into his framework? yeah, so i want to make clear that i'm not speaking for henry kissinger. i understand that i accidentally no in the sense that i haven't talked to him in detail about about how he would deal with the current situation my conversations were about very dealt with the situation back then because that's what i was focused on in the book. but if i try to apply disengerian principles. to the current situation, i would say first of all. that in terms of the non-state actors. he had no time for you know

unless they were going to become a state. then they could fit into the west failure in order as you refer to it. but as non-state actors, they needed to be vanquished pure and simple they represented a threat to the state system. and and therefore they needed to be conquered. by the great powers in the system now the palestinians there's different story because they gain, the right to self-determination and gain that recognition. from the international community and from israel and from the united states and so from his point of view the question was how to to develop. palestinians into a state that would be have a stake in maintaining the order. and so he talks about a state in

the making. and the need to to the palestinians to acquire what he calls the attributes of sovereignty. which is very much fits within what robin was trying to do originally with the oslo chords, and that's as far as i know. that's still the way he looks at it now in terms of the outside. powers, i think that's a very interesting question. the idea the principle is do they support the status quo, or do they support? countries in the region who are seeking to disrupt the status quo. if russia in syria is trying to re-establish a stable situation. which the russians you know claim to want to do. and a working with israel in some ways to do that. then you know he would he would be all in favor of working with

the russians on that. he never regarded syria. as a country that he needed to have in america's pocket like egypt. syria had a legitimizing function as i explained. but it was not important enough in the balance of power. that you had to deny it to the soviet union in those days or to russia today. their whole question is is russia prepared to stabilize syria? and prevent isis or other radical non-state actors from creating problems same with turkey. are they prepared to stabilize the order or are they coming in to disrupt it for the sake of expanding their position of influence in the region? that's how he viewed the soviet union. and he decided that the only way to really deal with the soviet union was in effect to sidelines in the unit then in the region to push it out.

so he it would be judged in a kind of black and white terms if you if they're ready to stabilize work with them. to contain iran to squats the non-state actors to bolster the order, but if they're not if they're going to support these non-state actors in disrupting the status quo then you have to counter them as well. yeah. yeah, and that's a very important reflection on yeah on current us. policy and views of the region and interaction with the rising or resurgent great powers china and russia you all can find it just a knee jerk and it's but, you know great power competition. we must win the others must, you know, retreat and so on without taking into account. we the potential common interest. of a state order that everybody can benefit it from stability absence of war that's almost