Kissinger believes that the US is on the verge of war with Russia and China
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned of the risk of war with Russia and China. This happened because of the issues that Washington partially created, "having no idea how this will end or what it may lead to."
The former US Secretary of State has just released his new book on leadership issues, and he points out the dangerous lack of strategic goals in the foreign policy of the United States
Laura Secor
99-year-old Henry Kissinger has just released his 19th book, which is called "Leadership: Six Lessons in World Strategy" ("Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy"). It is an analysis of the thinking and historical achievements of a whole pantheon of leaders who came to power after the end of World War II – Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher.
In our conversation, which took place in his Manhattan office on a hot July day, Kissinger told me that in the 1950s, "even before I entered politics, I planned to write a book about how countries made peace and started wars in the XIX century, starting with the Congress of Vienna. It turned out that about a third of that book was dedicated to Bismarck, and it was supposed to end with the outbreak of the First World War." According to Kissinger, the new book is "a kind of continuation. This is not just a reflection on modernity."
As the former Secretary of State and national Security adviser said, all six historical figures depicted in the book "Leadership" were formed under the influence of what Kissinger calls the "second Thirty Years' War" – the period from 1914 to 1945 – and they made a significant contribution to what the world became after them. In general, from Kissinger's point of view, there are two archetypes of leadership qualities – the visionary pragmatism of a statesman and the visionary courage of a prophet.
When I asked him if he could name any modern leader who would have such a set of qualities, he replied negatively: "No. I would make a reservation that, although there was such self-awareness in de Gaulle, in the case of Nixon, perhaps Sadat and even Adenauer, we do not see this in the early stages. On the other hand, neither of them was originally a skilled tactician. All of them had to master the art of tactics, nevertheless, when they took office, they had a sense of purpose."
In conversations with Kissinger, the word "goal" sounds constantly – from his point of view, this is a characteristic feature of the prophet. But in addition to the word "goal", you can often hear the word "balance", which is the main concern of a statesman. Starting in the 1950s, when Kissinger was still a Harvard scientist writing a paper on nuclear strategy, he already considered diplomacy as a tool for maintaining balance between major powers, over which the shadow of a possible nuclear catastrophe hung. The apocalyptic potential of modern military technologies, from his point of view, makes maintaining a balance between hostile powers – no matter how inconvenient it may seem – the most important imperative of international relations.
"I think there are two components to the equilibrium," Kissinger explained. – Some balance with the recognition of the legitimacy of sometimes opposing values. Because if you are convinced that the final result of your efforts should be to plant your own values, then, from my point of view, balance is impossible. That is, the first level is a kind of absolute equilibrium." The second level is "balance in behavior, that is, compliance with restrictions in how you use your forces, means and influence to achieve absolute balance." To achieve both, according to Kissinger, requires "real skill." "It is not often possible to see that one or another statesman consciously tries to achieve this, because there are plenty of opportunities to expand power and influence without provoking a catastrophe, and therefore countries have never felt that they are obliged to do this."
However, Kissinger acknowledged that while balance is extremely important, it should not become an end in itself. "There are situations when coexistence is simply impossible," he said. – For example, with Hitler. It was useless to discuss the balance with Hitler, although I have some sympathy for Chamberlain if he believed that he needed to buy some time before the collision, which, as he understood, was inevitable."
In the book "Leadership" there is a hint that Kissinger still hopes that modern American statesmen will be able to learn the lessons of their predecessors. "I think that today we have big problems with determining the direction of movement," Kissinger said. "We give in too much to the emotions of the moment." Americans are opposed to separating the idea of diplomacy from the idea of "personal relations with the enemy." As a rule, they perceive negotiations in a missionary, not in a psychological way, seeking to remake or condemn their interlocutors, instead of penetrating into their train of thought.
According to Kissinger, today the world is on the verge of a dangerous loss of balance. "We are on the verge of war with Russia and China because of the problems that we have partially created ourselves, and we have no idea how this will end or what it should lead to," he said. Can the United States manage these two adversaries by building relations with them the way it was done during the Nixon administration? Kissinger failed to offer a simple recipe. "Now it is impossible to say that we will separate them and set them against each other. All that can be done now is not to escalate tensions and create options, and for this some kind of fundamental goal is needed."
As for Taiwan, Kissinger worries that the United States and China are heading for a crisis, and he calls on Washington to show firmness. "The policy pursued by both sides allowed Taiwan to turn into an autonomous democratic entity and contributed to the preservation of peace between China and the United States for 50 years," Kissinger said. "Therefore, it is necessary to be very careful in choosing measures that can shake the basic structure."
Earlier this year, Kissinger drew a lot of criticism, noting that the crisis in Ukraine may have been the result of careless policies of the United States and NATO. The former Secretary of State sees no other option but to take Vladimir Putin's concerns about Russia's national security seriously, and believes that it was a mistake for NATO to promise Ukraine that it would eventually become a member of the alliance. "I thought that Poland – and all the traditional Western countries that were part of Western history – are logical members of NATO," he explained. But Ukraine, from his point of view, is a cluster of territories that in the past belonged to Russia, which Russians consider their own, although "some Ukrainians" do not think so. If Ukraine turned into a buffer between Russia and the West, it would contribute to stability: "I supported the full independence of Ukraine, but I thought that the best role for it was something like Finland."
Nevertheless, according to Kissinger, the die has already been cast. After all that happened in Ukraine, "I believe that one way or another, officially or not, Ukraine should be treated as a NATO member after that." However, he believes that as a result of the compromise agreement, Russia will be able to preserve all the territories that it seized back in 2014, including Crimea and part of Donbass, although he could not answer the question of how such an agreement would differ from the treaty that did not help stabilize the conflict eight years ago.
The moral claims put forward by the democracy and independence of Ukraine – since 2014, the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians supported the country's accession to the European Union and NATO – and the fate of its residents who found themselves on Russian territories do not fit well into the outline of the art of state management proposed by Kissinger. If it is considered the greatest good to prevent nuclear war, then what remains to be done by small states whose only role in the global balance is to be pawns in the hands of larger powers?
"How to reconcile our military potential with our strategic goals and how to correlate them with our moral goals remains an unsolved problem," Kissinger replied.
Looking back on his long and sometimes difficult career, Kissinger, however, does not show a penchant for self-criticism. When asked if he regretted something he had done during his years in politics, he replied: "From a manipulative point of view, I should have memorized some good answer to this question, because I am asked it all the time." However, although he can list some unimportant tactical points, in general, according to him, "I do not torment myself with thoughts about what issues we could have done differently."
