RAYMOND ARON
27
As
for me, I think that I simply never possessed the qualities necessary
to exercise power, even at the level of an advisor. Prudent in my writings, I
have difficulty in controlling my speech. I allow myself to express extreme
ideas, to respond to circumstances or to express moods which do not repre–
sent my deepest thoughts and risk discrediting them. A political man has to
hold his tongue as well as his pen. I am not incapable of adapting my words
to my audience, but diplomatic language is painful to me. I like to speak
without weighing my words, and even the most trivial lie costs me an effort:
I lack imagination in refusing a dinner invitation or a request for a lecture.
There is more. I never claimed to have the competence of a profes–
sional economist. To be sure, most finance ministers themselves do not have
the competence of those who teach or administer the economy. Why should
a minister, ifhe were seeking an advisor outside the administration, choose a
man like me, on the periphery of all disciplines, a free spirit inclined toward
passions that are hardly compatible with the duties of advisor?
The case of Henry Kissinger obsesses commentators, because of my
relations with him and his feelings toward me, which he expresses freely,
even in my absence. My grandchildren will proudly preserve the copy of his
Memoirs
with the inscription: "To my teacher" (unless historians remove
Kissinger from his pedestal and] share with him in the fickleness of fate).
Presiding over the National Security Council in Washington, informing the
President of the United States every morning about the state of the world,
negotiating for him in Peking or Moscow - such a role would have fascinated
me if I had been an American citizen. All the more so because Bundy, Ros–
tow, Kissinger, and Brzezinski, professors at Harvard or MIT, whose status
was comparable to mine, acceded to the post without an electoral campaign,
without laying siege to the Prince. Of course, as an American citizen, I would
have sought the experience of power, but I would - I hope - have under–
stood in time that I did not have the stuff of a Kissinger.
Intelligence, knowledge, and judgement are not enough. Performance is
also required, of which I would most probably have been incapable: to im–
pose oneself in the jungle of Washington disputes, personal and political, to
seduce the press or at least avoid its hostility, to make or inspire often nec–
essary decisions that send young men into battle and death . Not that I reject
the use of force, in theory or in practice. But it is one thing to agree ab–
stractly to the recourse to arms, and another to convince the president here
and now to take that step. My scrupulous nature and my hatred of violence
would have told against me in tl1e post occupied by an exceptional intellectual
combat it. ..." The text is dated "summer 1957." Roger was probably thinking in particular
of my positions on Algeria.
