>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight, a look at china, its history and its relationship with the united states through unique eyes-- henry kissinger, whose new book is called "on china." >> what ought to be done is to establish a permanent dialogue at a high level of making sure that we interpret events as they occur in a parallel way and if we don't how we manage our disagreements. that we don't wait for things to bottle up and then wind up in a confrontation. it hasn't yet really wound up in a conontation and i thi is possible to achieve what i'm describi. but in each country there are trends that see the other as enemies. there's an... not really doing it, too, b as i answer

questions about this book... >> rose: right. >> ...over half of have seen china as an established enemy. >> rose: kissinger on china for the hour. next. captioning sponsored by rose communications

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in neyork city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: henry kissinger is here. the former national security advisor and secretary of state has just written a new book. it is called "on china." he writes both as a student of china's history and a figur within it. he played a key role in bringing back the historic rapprochement to china that culminated in president nixon's visit to beijing. until then, the two countries hadn't had contact for more than two decades. he will be 88 on friday, he

remains a presence on the global stage. his views continue to be sought by leaders across the country. i am very pleased to have him back at this table. welcome. >> good to be here. >> rose: dedicated to annette and oscar de la ren, your friends. there is much about history here and i want to come back to the german history do the chines have a larger sense of history than we or is it that their history is long you are than ours? >> their history is longer than ours but they have a different sense of history. i mentioned in the book, for example, that when maw notified his associates that he was going to go to war with india in 1962 he did so by invoking a war tha had been fought between china and india in the tang dynasty which was a thousand years earlier and then another war that had been fought 600 years earlier and he told his

assembled generals from the first war you can learn these lessons, from the second war you can learn the following lessons. not even europeans, who have a more developed sense of history than we do would you find a leader who says let'searn the following lessons from charlemagne and an american who would say we can learn the following lessons from president polk. >> rose: yes. >> it wouldn't be cceivable. >> rose: was it chairman mao who said to you or to someone else that it's too early to tell what the ramifications of the french revolution are? >> that's what is alleged but i don't quite remember that. it's a good story but what did happen to me was that my... i think almost my first meeting with mao he said let me tell you a story. and he told the story of a romanianmissyho cam to beijing and tried to compose the

differences china had with russia, saying that they're both communists and should rk tother and mao said there's no point talking about it because i will fight them for 10,000 years. so when the romanian continued to protest he sai okay, in consideration your long journey, i will take a thousand years off and it will be 9,000 years. this went on until he was down at 7,000 years at which point he is alleged to have said i've made my last coession. so then he turned to me and said "you see how easy it will be to deal wit me? he said every time i make a concession it's for a thousand years." >> rose: (laughs) >> but what he was really telling me is watch out, if you cross me you'll be in a fight that will never end. >> rose: why did you start with this conversation with him and his top military leaders?

to make that point? >> to make exactly this point. >> so to understand china you've got to understand. >> you have to understand... >> rose: where they come from? >> what happened in this case, in the tang dynasty, it's a living reality from which they can learn for one thing they don't forget ny... it's a different perspective. we look at the future, our coordinates are ahead of us. in chinese mythology when they talk about their first emperor, the yellow emperor, he is reconstructing an already existing reality when their basic philosopher is trying to construct an acult major that was in the past, it's a different perspective. >> the question has often been phrased in terms of what will

their economic success impact on their political life. >> inevitably. the economic success started in a society that was largely agricultural. they are every year up to a hundred million people are moving from the country side into cities. that means they are deprived of some of their roots and have to define a new relationship to the syst or to where they live. in every other society that has lead to political attachment and it's inevitable that in china how toring the new economy into relationship with a political system will be the big challenge of the next ten years. and i say ten years because a new administration is coming in next year whose term is ten

years. another fundamental factor that isccurringn china it's the cultural impact of the one-child family. chinese culture has been based on large families in which many of the younger generation take care of the older generation. now you have four grandparents competing for attention of one tribe so you have a much more... or you reasonably would have a more assertive generation growing up and a huge social problem of how to take care of the older generation which is growing and the aging of china in about ten years will be more significant than the aging in most western countries.

>> rose: what is their sense of mao? >> that seems to change periodically. there was a period... mao was never totally discredited but under deng the memory of the culturalevolution was so alive the cultural revolution being the last outburst of mao's attempt to achieve what he consider the ethical purity of the chinese where he tore up families and society. so mao was... the official view of him was he was 70% right and 30% wrong, but there was more emphasis on the 30% wrong now there's beginning to be a new appreciation of mao partly on the part of the younger generation which didn't experience the cultural

revolution. >> rose: like their parents did. >> they see him as a symbol of somebody who unified china after ny centuries and in a way an answer to the selfishness of the yuppie generation that is emerging in china. this is not yet a domant view, but my understanding is that taxi drivers have medals of mao in their car and he would probably be remembered like at first there was an emperor who unifd them 2000 years ago who has always been greatly respected for the unification but never been given full credit becauseover his brutality. something like that

>> rose: so the question is will they look at the brutality of mao tse-tung and say it dwarfs his achievements? or will they say the achievements have to be only understood in the context of the means he used to make them >> i think the latter. what you are having now, for example, in chung king there is an ambitious party secretary who is one of the eminent leaders of the mmunist party who has started the reform movement in chung king dicted against corrupti which is a general experience. but also trying to develop a legitimacy for the political system in which some of the maoist patterns are resurrected.

patriotic songs, songs extelling the communist party and huge organizations that dothat a that is also partly, think, a reaction to the phenomena of which we call the arab spring to create an alternative legitimacy to the pluralistic democratic system. >>. >> rose: you believe that it' incumbent on the united states, in a sense, to make sure that the chinese understand us and this we understand them so that there is not a response of a kind of fear and that the absence of building a... >> it's incumbent on both sides. i think both sides have a missionary origin, but the missionary quality of america is that we think we... anybody in the world can become american or

canollow our principles s that we believe in universal conversion. the chise also believe ty have universal values but you cannot become a chinese if you are not inside theultural orbit ofhe chinese. so whathe chinese are looking for is majestic conduct, great achievement which will tn bring other countries in a lationship of respect towards china. that was the origin of the tributary system historilly. so if the american missionary conflict and the chinese perception of what they're entitled to by their performance clash without the two sides having understood what they're

facing, it could be... it would be very unfortunate for both societies and i think for the world. >> rose: what's clear in the this book is the two points you make. number one is whether jiang zemin or whoever has told you we will not be pressured to do what we don't want to do. >> right. >> rose: one thing is they're saying looking forward we have to understand that the chinese, number one, will refuse to be pressured. >> right. alsohat the chinese are realists. they understand reality. >> rose: but that brings into question this idea of encirclement. how does the united states create pacific community without the chinese believing that we're trying to encircle them >> it's... both sides have the following fear the chinese have the fear that you described, encirclement and kind of military containment policy. we have the subconscious fear,

anyway, of being pushed out of asia and having an arab block develop that we will then... in which blocks of western hemisphere confront blocks of asia which would lead to a sort of tension that would be very hard to keep under control. so we... the limits to china are not primarily a military problem. i think it is important for the united states to have good relationships have with countries like india, indonesia, bumany of these relationships could be within a patte that china, too, could participate in. of economic growth, of the

global economy, of education and cultural relationships s that the military aspect of this confrontation is reduced and a context in which we and chin find some things we can do together in order to avoid the danger that we think of each other as permanent enemies in which case every action would be interpreted in strategic terms... >> rose: as threatening to them. >> as threatening to them. or by them as threatening to us. my appeal is as much to chinese leaders as to american leaders. >> rose: to make sure if >> to make sure, one, that we both conduct policies that take into account the nightmares of the other. >> rose: is that happening

snowed we have these security and economic dialogues, we have the president... >> what is happening... i think the best thing that nixon administration did was not the opening as such, because that was going to happen sooner or later, wmay have aclerated it somewhat the best thing that was done in the nixo administration is that we were prepar to put aside some of the chnical issues and spend two-thirds of our time wh we met with chinese leaders on genuinely explaining to them how we thought about international affairs and let them explain their view to us so that when a concrete issue arose down the road we could put it into some framework. that does not seem to me to b happening. >> rose: but... go ahead. >> what is happening is good communique drafting.

i support the communiques that have been drafted but then not much happens until another communique... >> so what should happen. >> so ought to be done to establish a permanent dialogue at a high level of making sure that we interpret events as they occur in a parallel way and if we don't how we manage our disagreements. that we don't wait for things to bubble up and then winup in a confrontation. it hasn't yet really wod up in a confrontation and i think it's possible to achieve what i'm describing but inach country they are trended to see the other as enemies. now as i do... not really doing a tour but as i answer questions about this book... >> rose: right.

>> ...over half of them see china already as an established enemy. >> rose: questions frommerican interviers and journalis? >> american intviewers, from american groups. and within china you can... i'm mentioning some of the books that i've written in china that say it's going to be a final showdown between... >> so clearly what you're saying is there are people within both communities, the united states and in china who look at this with a rather negative attitude and assume there will be a confrontation. >> because there is competition and that's unavoidable. and the military strength of china will grow but then the issue is how do they protect it? is it largely a defensive or will they do what the soviet union attempted to do of allenging the united states on a global basis?

it's issues like that that need attention. >> rose:ut they have these twice a year the curity and economic dialogue with the top ranks of chinese and u.s. officials. including secretary of state and secretary of the treasury. >> i supported that dialogue and as you know, i have extremely high respect for both hillary clinton and for geithner. >> rose: right. >> but those are two-day meetings. and what hapned in practice- whoever does it-- is that their staff is being prepared and almost invaably the issu will come down to what is the current problem that most needs attention? >> rose: rather than the long historical perspective as well as the risk that we are... >> take the issue of korea which i mentioned a few times. you can look that the as an

issue of nuclear proliferation or you can look at it as an evolution of northeast asia. and until you get the second one understood at least in some basis, the proliferation issue can't be settled bause right now the pressure required to get north korea to give up nuclear weapons is the same that would beequid to overthrow them. it's the one great achievement they've had. so it therefore opens up the issue of what is the ture of north korethat led to a war in 1950 when, totally unexpectedly from an american point of view the chinese intervened. because they considered north korea so essential. soow you can eve v a dialogue a problem like this that's

the unttled issue. and i'm not saying that in opposition to the administration i'm saying in the opposition to the way bureaucracies generally operate and it's not a philosophical difference. >> rose: what is the most frequent question the chinese leadership ask of you about america when you go? >> what i find in china is it will be three or four american individual events. you and i would know that these individual events happened as individual events. for example, i think the fall of 2009 we sold arms to taiwan. the president saw the dalai lama at the white house and... >> rose: after his vit. >> yeah, and the treasury department raised essue of currency exchange. you and i know these are

individual actions. i say "you and i" because americans would understand that much. the chinese put them all together and developed a theory of how this was designed not only to contain chinaut reduce its role in the world. so then they developed a counteraction to a perceived american effort that isn't really a coherent american effort. now by the same token, we will look at some chinese weapons program program and say well, this proves... >> rose: they're getting more aggressive militarily. >> that there going go after hawaii next. >> rose: so where do you put human rights in this context of china, u.s., and the future? >> the fundamental chinese attitude towards foreign pressures on human rights is at least twofold.

first they followed the principles that the west followed after the treaty of westphalia in 1648 for 300 years when europe was devastated as a result of a war in which countries intervened in the domestic structures of each her by trying to convert populations. so it was... the principle was put forward that sovereity means that foreign policy concns only act in states beyond their borders. this is a principle thatll countries followed until the last generation really. we never followed it completely becausef the special erican circumstances. the seco chinese view is that for 150 years after the opening up of china in the 19th century

the west intervened in chinese domestic affairs and so they th... and that the essence of what china is trying to do is what mao said on the first day of independence. china has stood soup that china will not let itself be lectured by foreigners. and i traced here when president clinton, he tried for four years a very active sanctioned back foreign policy and the cnese on human rights. so on the other side... so we have to understand tha about china. and the chinese have to understand that america cannot be america without expressing its views on the importance of democracy and on individual transgressions of human dignity

as we understand it. so we cannot stop having that attitude but we can perhaps limit the pressures we generate as a result of this. the chinese have to understand that this will be an american attitude and see whether we can find some area in between. >> rose: what do they say privately? to do they say we realize that we have... we take actions including the imprisonment of a nobel rip sglent we realize that >> what they will say... i do discuss individual cases with them in private and so i don't want to go into that now. but as a general proposition they would say we are trying to devep a more democratic base.

we may have a different conception of democracy. and they believe that they are moving in a direction which is compatible with at least some values, t onndividual cases th will... >> rose: why do you think... >> our views do not match. >> rose: why do you think they do it? >> they do it because the latent fear in china-- if you look at chinese history-- it has alternated between periods of great cohesion and periods of disintegration. and when people say... speak of regime change there our new conservative wing... >> rose: right. >> that's whalely what they're after. and so they are... they... but

for china historically regime change has meant 50, and sometimes 100 years of chaos. there hasn't been a period of a smooth transition from one dynasty to some other government so it's always in china the latent fear of chaos. inform the 19th century there was a figure who claimed to be... i think it was the brother of jesus who conquered central china in the so called taiping rebellion. and 30 million people were killed before this thing has run its course. so that fear of chaos is alway beneath the surface. >> rose: there was... but you have said-- as i understan-

>> but i'm not saying we have to accommodate all of this. i'm saying we have to understand it. >> rose: and you are on record saying they ought to release the nobel recipient. are you not? >> yes, i think it's an unwise move of them and i deplore it. >> rose: let me go to the history. what was the first conversations about china? >> that nixon and i had? >> rose: yes. >> younow, it was a strange situation. i didn't know nixon when he appointed me. >> rose: you worked for nelson rockefeller. >> i worked for his principal opponent within the republican party, something i don't believe could happen in the way politics is structured now. as it happened, both of us had come tthe conclusion... >> rose: although they would say the appointment of hillary clinton was some of that. you know, she was a principal opponent of barack obama. >> that's true. >> rose: but go ahead. >> that's actually correct.

he... we both had como similar conclusion the conclusion was that when you... the world was in a kind of a cur mohel as a result of the vietnam war. the soviet union had jt occupied czechoslovakia. we both came to the view that the united states needed an alternative vision of world order than simply the cold war. and we did not see how the cold war could be conducted with the soviet union unless china was a part of it. but we had no idea having ce to that conclusion what to do about it. so we were sort of fitfully talking about it and on one occasion we found some dutch diplomat who was traveling to china and we sort of gave him a

half-baked message. we never heard from him again. i don't know what happened. >> rose: and what happened in warsaw? >> we... the chinese, because of the cultural revolution, had recalled all their diplomats from around the wor. so the only place where there was a diplomat where there was also an american diplomat was in warsaw becau in warsaw we held formal tks periodic intervals so i instructed the american ambassador there at the next social eve where the chinese were present to walk up to the chinese and tell them that we wanted to talk. the diplomat, an outstanding man thought this was a kissinger invention and he didn't get it

through channels so he ignored it. so i made him come back and walked him into the oval office. >> rose: (laughs) >> and the president repeated the instruction. >> rose: (laughs) "tour tell the chinese..." >> and they did it and there was a report now that the chinese had written about it. >> rose: the interesting thing about this book you have access to chinese thinking you did not have. >> a lot of chinese. >> rose: we'll talk mor about that. >> including some during the korean war and erything. rely fcinating. so the chinese report in their story that they thought the americans... saw the americans looking over to them and they started... they were afraid we'd come over and they ran away. and the american interpreter ran after them and said concern.

>> rose: "our government want to talk to you." >> our government wants to talk to you. >> rose: so here were you and richard nixon the president looking at russia and saying that we can use china perhaps as an opening and st of give us more levage againstussia. >> right. >> rose: all right. what you now know is that the chinese in the person of mao tse-tung was having the very same idea. >> exactly right. they came to the same conclusion. >> rose: but you didn't know each other was coming to that conclusion. >> not oy we didn't know we were coming to the same conclusion, we didn't know how to communicate it to the other and we both made mistakes in doing that we went to the most independent of moscow which was romania and tried to use them to arrange an opening debate. but mao didn't trust any

economist so that didn't work very well. mao thought he could use a journalist who we coidered the fellow traveler as a sort of messenger to us bute thought he was just a propagandist. so it was like two ships psing in the night t how did mao come to this view which is orth of interesting. there were four marshals of the people's beration army that said we were working if factories doing manual labor. he pulled them out of the factories, brought them beijing and said "write me an essay about the international situation." at first they thought this was... might be a trick to get them to incriminate themselves

but we convinced them that they were to do it so they wrote a paper in effect saying he ought to open to the united states. then the question was how do we convey this to mao in a becauseable way? one of the marshals said "tell him is likehe hitler/stalin pact." another marshall said i have a better idea-- and this is all from chinese documents-- he said tell him this is like the chapter in the romance of the three kingdoms in which state a moves against state b by using state c and that novel was 600 years old, was band in china but mao had read it many times and so that's what they did. >> rose: help us understand what you have discoved about the chinese. there is a sense that we don't want to be an imperialistic power but we want to be an

influential power that demands respect. >> right. the practical effect of that is they want to be influential, corresponding to what they consider their achievement. so that has to dramatic experience in the history of the 19th century when for 2,000 years there had been the greatest power that they knew in the world and then suddenly foreigners come invading their countries, carving pieces out so that a lot of... of 19th century. noourt their approach to strategy is different from ours. we segment the problem into constituent part and then we deal with experts on these

constituent parts they put all the things together so that econics... >> rose: there's a grand strategy of which all the elements fall into... all contributorslowi into one river of a strategy. >> right. and now they are undergoing-- as we have we are in a formal way-- they have defined... now that the first period that i experienced chinese leaders, their primary concern had to be how to restore their domestic structure and their... i don't mean so that they could play a significant... >> rose: but what are the intentions 15 years from now when we may have the largest economy? >> but they will also have tremendous probles of

urbanization, of aging, of the retionship between the cities and the countryside so they cannot just translate their pow interglobal adventures. and i don't think that that's the way they look at it. >> rose: but have they lost any spect to us because of what they saw happen with the economic crisis? >> i think the biggest blow to our relationship has been the chinese interpretation of our financial crisis. that we didn't look at political matters in an identical way that was apparent after the first years of the relationship and ey sort of understood that this was the case. but they did think there was a practice from which they could learn. >> rose: and they had, in fact, from deng xiaoping.

>> and basically when deng xiaoping said opening up and reform-- which were his basic slogans-- he really meant learn from the americans and he sent himself to students abroad but then comes 2007 and it suddenly turns out that the american financial model that they had... we tried to copy and in someresg in some of its assumption and that has not only made them lose confidence but that we knew what we were dng but those people inside the chinese system who lead the unid states h a lot of explaining to do. and we still suffer from it. i saw some commentary on the chinese five year plan and i don't pretend to be an economist

but the commentary said don't let the americans seeming recovery fool you because the west is trying to solve the current economic crisis by exactly same methods that kept them into the crisis. and i'm not saying that they're right but i'm saying that that.... >> rose: back to mao tse-tung and zhou enlai. how were they different? how did they work together? how was... >> well, mao destroyed chao enlie. >> rose: i kw. >> at the end mao destroyed almost everybody. >> numrwo man to mao. and mao survived. i know a leader in another country once who was number two and he said his trick... the trick s to be close enough so

that no one else could come between but not so close that the number onefeltthreatened. this man didn't... >> rose: so he lost out, too? >> he lost out, too. but mao was a propheti type. he had his own visions of a unique chise ethical mission and he was assailed by his mortality so that he didn't feel he could start this and let somebody else complete it. he had to try to complete in the his lifetime. so he... most revolutionarys that you can study in history have a specific goal and when they reach it they then institutionalize that goal. mao didn't want to institutionalize anything. he wanted permanent revolution.

he wanted peoe to go through this process. >> rose: but he wanted permanent revolution in china. it wasn't that he wanted permanent revolution the way fidel castro wanted to export revolution... >> no, he didn't want to export it but he thought china would... again, would be sort of an... >> rose: admired and therefore... >> an inspiration, fo example, again in e chinese documents-- some of which i quote here-- in 1969 when he became... began considering thidea of opening to the united states he wanted to get an took place the following question. he called in the head... the australian communist party. he wanted somebody from the west but he wanted the communist and hi asked them the following question. i'm watching the student riots all the world. >> rose: this s in '68.

>> '68. >> rose: france, everywhere. >> '68. and i think conversation was early '69 but around that... at that time. he called in that australian leader and he said what we are watching here is this the beginning of a world revolution or the beginning of world war? does it mean that these student demonstrations will spread all over the world or is it the beginning of another world war? if it's... what he meant was this. if it's the former then we have to join the revolutionary movement. if it's the latter, we have to protect ourselves against invasion and we finally decided on the latter.

but he spent hours with that austraan. >> rose: where do y p him as a man who was prepared to do anything for his vision of what his country ought to be including killing millions of people-- yes-- >> he inflicted unspeakable suffering on his people. he killed... or his politics killed tens of millions of people. the cultural revolution tore apart families because he had the idea that unless... everybody should have years of working in the country side to know how the ordinary people lived. but he also unified the country. he made china a major international player. he's the only significant communist country that survived the upheavals and he switched in

the middle of the cold war to the winning side. >> rose: for the west versus the soviet union. >> yeah, but nobody else mansioned so these were significant achievements. westerners would say that suffering does not justify the achievement. th chinese may make a difference... may come to a different conclusion. rose: and you said it's a different appreciation of mao today. >> seems to be. >> rose: tre's so many things to talk about, but you mentioned this notionf worrying about upsings leading to war. where do you think today the most troubling possibility of war starting is in the world? >> the most troubling one that i see is korea which we've talked about here before that might

occur if we wake up one morning and find that the korean structure has... north korea has disintegrated beuse it's after all held together by one family that is going through succession and if that has not been considered before that would trigger the concerns of all surrounding... >> rose: but let me ask you that. we know they're going to have a transition there and their leader is going to die because he's widely known for very, very sick, right? >> right. >> rose: do the chinese and the united statess have considerations about, look, what happens if he dies? what are the posble scenarios and what do we do to avoid the worst. >> you have to consider south kore what will they do and what will they think?

and how easy is it for the chinese to talk about the disintegration of an ally tha is... for which they went to war 50 years ago. so it's not a subject about which i can talk very freely but i'm sure this is on people's mind in both capitals. how they can manage to talk about that, that's a tricky question. the second area which i think is... has an a danger... i can see the dangers of war occurring when there is a situation that countries consider affects them fundamentally but there is no understanding of what other countries are planning to do and no framework for interpreting these actions.

so afghanistan avenue the withdrawal of americans whi is almost certainly going to happen and e interplay of pakistan, india, and eventually other countries. >> rose: like russia >> like iran. like cna which is affected. so tt's an area where everybody is... has a common concern but the situation fluid and for a variety of reasons they haven't been coming to a understanding. >> rose: who snant the pakistanis? >> no. i... this is a view that i've had now for months. i think the solution... there's no solution to the afgha problem but the way that... the

transition from what we are doing to what will haveo happen is not b way of negotiation with the taliban because the taliban are a party to their conflict and once we are out they have no restraint on them. i ha eerienced with an agreement you makehich you think you can enforce and then it turns out you can't. >> rose: vietnam. >> in vietnam. now in afghanistan we won't think we can enforce it for ourselves so therefore there has to be some underanding of how to keep afghanistan from becoming again a terrorist state and for that the countries that are potential targets has to be involved. the reason it doesn't happen yet is that for the other countries as long as we are there they have no great incentive to

commit themselves to anything and on our side those who want to get out are looking for any method that gets them out, like negotiation with taliban. >> rose: then i'm confused. if you need for everybody to be involved in some coming together and understanding the risk and you need those people to be engaged by this but they don't want to be engaged as long as we're occupied, as long as we're there... >> we have to convince them, a, that we're going to get out and, b, that there is an interval which n which we are prepared to adjust our withdrawal to an internationastatus agrment for the region which then everybody in some way manages to implement. now is that possible? i don't know that. at the beginningover a diplomatic process, you can't

tell exactly but you can state... you can stick through your objectives. >> rose: okay, one last historical analogy. you point out the fact that the germans, a developing economic power, and the conflict with britain took place >> right. we're talking about preworld war i. >> exactly right. and therefore you ended up with world war i. so what's the analogy of that to the present relationship between china and if united states? china is the obviously developing economic power. >>ell, of course, there's one difference, the germans had not been as a nation a significant power. china thinks that i always was a significant power and it is restoring its historic position. i think the analogy is that if

the leaders of britain and germany in 1910, let's say, had known what the world would look like after the war in 1919 would they not have tried to find some way of a parallel evolution? because if the objective was to keep germany from becoming the strongest european nation, that's happened anyway. but prior to world war i the country that was most responsible in my opinion was germany because it pursued a military policy that directly challenged aritish command and

it conducted a diplomatic policy which was based on humiliating other parties in negotiations in order to teach them that rmany was all powerful. but in this case we have starting with a cleaner slate so we're not in 1910, we're at 1890 in that sense. i mean we can still design our mutual appach but i'm not say i'm not offering here aecipe of specific qualities. i'm urging a way of thinking out of which we should then develop a specific policy. >> rose: and what's the title of the last chapter? >> "does history repeat itself." >> rose: >> "does history repeat itself." >> rose: here's the last paragraph.

in pursuiting peace, everince i was a graduate student well over half a century ago, on the basis of these studies i am aware that the cultural, historic, and strategic gaps in perception that i have describe willed pose formidable challenges for even the best intentioned and most foresighted leadership on both sides. on the other hand, where history confined to the mechanical repetition of the mast, no transformation would ever have occurred. every great achievement was a vision before it became a reality. in that sense it arose from commitment, not resignation, to the inevitable. in his essay perpetual peace emmanuel cant argued that peace would eventually come to the world in one or two ways, by human insight or by conflict and catastrophes of a magnitude tt left humanity no other choice. we are at such a juncture. when chao enlie agreed on the communique that announced a secret visit he said this will shake the rld. what a culnation if 40 years

later the united states and china coul mer tir efforts not to shake the world but to build it. >> rose: thank you. >> thank you very much. >> henry kissinger for the hour. the bo is called "on china." it is history; it is memoir; is it strategy; and it is insight into the peopl who made up china and the people who came from the united states to try to engage and what the fears were and what the hopes were and what the events were that pro poled history forward. thank you for joining us. see you next time.

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