Kissinger advises buildup of troops in Afghanistan

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_646626.html#

By Mike Wereschagin
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, October 6, 2009

President Obama should heed the advice of top military advisers and send more troops to Afghanistan, but the United States needs to focus less on setting up a strong central government there, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said during an appearance at Heinz Hall Monday night.

"Afghanistan has never been a country. Afghanistan is a collection of feudal rulers that get together only when they face foreign invasions," Kissinger said during a 90-minute talk with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

The event, attended by several hundred people, raised about $120,000 for Gilda's Club of Western Pennsylvania, a support program for cancer survivors and their families.

The U.S. approach in what Obama has called a "war of necessity" has been to bolster Afghanistan's central government in Kabul. Kissinger said the thinking is that once the government is functioning, the Afghan people will coalesce around it.

"I don't think that's possible," Kissinger said. "The purpose has to be the security of the population, and not a very long-range program."

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, said in a report to Obama that as many as 40,000 more troops are needed to prevent a failure in the country that granted al-Qaida sanctuary while operatives plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Kissinger said he should probably get the troops, but suggested Obama get Russia, India and China involved in the war effort, since they're affected, too.

Kissinger told the Tribune-Review before the program that Iran's announcement this weekend that it would allow international inspection of its nuclear enrichment plant shouldn't be celebrated. The United Nations had already required them to do so, Kissinger said.

"You can't consider it a concession, a great concession if they do something they are obliged to do," he said.

More promising is the possibility, expressed Sunday by a top Iranian official, that Iran might ship uranium to Russia and France, where it would be more highly refined into fuel for Iran's nuclear power plant at Bushehr, Kissinger said. Though that fuel could be used for nuclear weapons, intermediary countries could ensure stricter monitoring of the weapons-grade material the country possesses.

"If they ship all of the uranium, that would be a significant change. But they haven't yet said they would do it. They just said they would be willing to discuss it," Kissinger said.

"What we have to avoid is a situation like we are in with (North) Korea, where they sell us the same thing over and over again. What we need is denuclearization, deweaponization," he said.

Kissinger served as secretary of State to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford during one of the most tumultuous periods in recent U.S. history. From the Vietnam War to warming relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War to opening relations with China, the Nobel Peace Prize winner played an integral role in world history during the last half of the 20th century.

What's changed since then has been dilution of power -- and of threats, he said.

"There is no single major country that you can say is an enemy of the United States in the way the Soviet Union was, the way Nazi Germany was," said the Bavarian-born Kissinger, who evaded Nazi persecution by fleeing with his family to the United States in 1938.

Kissinger, noting the Group of 20 conference that took place last month in Pittsburgh, said he was present for the first meeting of its earliest predecessor, the Group of 5 in 1970s France.

"The G-20 wasn't conceivable in the 1970s," Kissinger said.

The April summit in London, where leaders pledged a coordinated response to the financial crisis, showed the international group was capable of meaningful action, O'Neill said.

"I thought that was pretty unique in our time," said O'Neill, who blamed the crisis in part on financial institutions' failure to keep enough money on hand. "Of all the problems we've had to face, it seems to me the financial crisis was the most unnecessary one."

The rise of nations such as China, India and Brazil has brought with it an economic system unbound by countries' borders, Kissinger said. The danger is, now crises spread quickly around the world, into places where crisis can erupt, he said.

During a recent conversation with a Chinese mayor, Kissinger said he was told "the U.S. recession caused 50 million people to leave the (more developed Chinese) coast and return" to the farms they had left behind.