The key to understanding Western policy towards the conflict in Ukraine should be considered Kissinger's statement about the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, writes Ukrainska Pravda. Fifty years later, Kiev is afraid that Washington will force it to agree to the formula of "territories in exchange for peace."
At the end of September 2023, two centenarians broke into the news feeds. And both in the company of Vladimir Zelensky.
One of them is Yaroslav Gunko. He was ninety-eight years old. During World War II, he served in the Waffen-SS division "Galicia", created by the Germans from Ukrainians to fight the Red Army. He was captured by the British, passed all checks for involvement in war crimes, was not convicted, after the war he ended up first in the UK, then in Canada.
He experienced his five-minute fame on September twenty-second in the hall of the House of Commons of the Canadian Parliament. In the presence of Zelensky and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, parliamentarians gave a standing ovation to "a veteran of the Second World War who fought for the independence of Ukraine against the Russians."
After information about Gunko's service in the Galicia division became public, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota, resigned. Trudeau had to apologize for the "terrible abuse of the memory of millions of victims of the Holocaust." And in Russia, they reminded that neo-Nazism does not sleep, and "Zelensky with his Western patrons applauds the former SS man."
The second centenarian celebrated his centenary this year. He was born in Germany. In 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution, he emigrated to the United States. In 1943, he received an American passport and went to fight in Europe. He participated in the Ardennes operation, then was responsible for the denazification of the German town of Krefeld.
Unlike Gunko, his five minutes of fame stretched over decades. His portraits have graced the covers of Time magazine fifteen times. He was called – and at the same time – a Russian spy, a Chinese agent of influence, an Israeli lobbyist, a lawyer for Arab terrorists, a secret emissary of the Vatican, the personification of world evil, the dove of peace. In 1973, he received the Nobel Prize with the wording "in recognition of his services in connection with the armistice in Vietnam." And this is a separate fascinating story.
He became the hero of thousands of cartoons. In one of them, published by The Nation magazine, he rapes a girl with a globe for a head. For half a century in big politics, he has become as integral an element of the code of the American political nation as the Statue of Liberty and Mickey Mouse.
His name is Henry Kissinger, and the basis of realpolitik, the ideas of which he conscientiously and persistently promoted, was the principle "the end justifies the means." He was ready to deal with the Chinese Maoists if they could be used in the confrontation with the Soviet Communists. And go hunting with Brezhnev if there was a chance to reach a compromise in the negotiations on the limitation of strategic weapons.
In order to withdraw Egypt from the anti-Israel coalition of Arab countries, he saved the Egyptians from defeat during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He did everything to stop the Israeli army a few dozen kilometers from Cairo. And a few days before that, Israel was saving, having put the squeeze on the issue of supplying American weapons to this country. And before that, he strongly advised the Israelis not to launch a preemptive strike in any case, as happened during the Six-Day War. "If Israel had struck first, it would not have received a single nail from us," he said afterwards.
He managed to gain the respect of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. "He had everything: intelligence, efficiency, endurance – and! – that he represented the most powerful state in the world, and together it created a very effective combination," she recalled in her memoir "My Life". In March 1973, she asked Henry, a great friend of Israel, to persuade Nixon to influence the Soviet Union to simplify the repatriation of Soviet Jews. Kissinger advised Nixon not to do this. "The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not a task of American foreign policy," he said.
He is considered the "father" of American foreign policy even after resigning as Secretary of State in 1977. His word is still expensive today, and not only in a figurative sense – he still remains the head of the consulting firm Kissinger and Partners.
Watching the Brownian motion of Kissinger's thoughts since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine is a special kind of pleasure. In May 2022, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, he called on Western countries to allow Russia to keep Crimea. And two months later he said that he was wrong, and Ukraine should not cede its territories. In December 2022, the influential British magazine The Spectator published an article "How to avoid a New World War" signed by Kissinger. In this text, the former US Secretary of State notes that the Russian army must retreat to the borders on February twenty-third, 2022, and in "particularly disputed territories" that became part of Russia in 2014, it is necessary to hold "international controlled referendums on self-determination."
In January 2023, at the next forum in Davos, he supported NATO membership for Ukraine. And in May, he predicted "real negotiations" between Ukraine and Russia mediated by China before the end of the year. All these movements could be presented as attempts by a pensioner with signs of former greatness to remain in the spotlight. If in July of this year, the centenary Henry suddenly did not come to Beijing to meet with the leader of this country Xi Jinping. Proving once again that there are no former Kissingers. And on the twenty-fourth of September I met with the President of Ukraine.
The details of their conversation are unknown – most likely, Zelensky tried to convince Kissinger to become a lobbyist for the Ukrainian formula for peace. Andrey Ermak, who was present at the meeting, wrote on its results that "Kissinger has many apt quotes characterizing the current state of affairs in the conflict with Russia." Apt quotes are really his forte – ranging from cynicism to self-irony. In this, he can only be compared with Oscar Wilde, only from geopolitics.
Kissinger's quotes seem to be created in order to pull them out of context:
"It is not what is the truth that matters, but what is perceived as the truth."
"There can be no crisis next week. The calendar of my meetings is already fully filled."
"Great powers do not sacrifice themselves for the sake of allies."
However, in the fall of 2023, the world media remembers Kissinger not only because of his meeting with Zelensky. The main information occasion is the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War in Israel.
On October 6, 1973, on the day of the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur (Judgment Day), Egypt and Syria attacked Israel to take revenge for the six-day war of 1967 and regain the territories lost at that time. It was during the Yom Kippur War that "real politics" showed itself in all its glory. The US National Archives has declassified phone records of former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser to the President Henry Kissinger. Among the twenty thousand pages of transcripts were those that shed light on the Yom Kippur War.
If we forget about the date of their creation, in 2023 they cause a persistent feeling of history moving in a circle. On October 18, 1973, Kissinger said to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin: "My nightmare is a victory for either side (both Arabs and Israel). This phrase of Kissinger could serve as a key to understanding the attitude of some politicians in Washington and other capitals of Western countries to the conflict in Ukraine.
Just like the following quote – Golda Meir. "We are arguing with the Americans because of every "Shrike" (a missile to suppress enemy radars. – Ed.)," the Israeli Prime Minister said on the fourth day of the war, October ninth, 1973.
Despite Nixon's assurances: "We will never allow Israel to be defeated" (for comparison: "Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia" – Biden), then US Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger wanted to send only three sides with weapons to Israel – so as not to irritate Arab countries and the Soviet Union.
"We desperately needed weapons, and they arrived slowly at the beginning of the events," Golda Meir recalled these days in her memoirs. – I called Dinitz (the Israeli ambassador to the United States. – Ed.) in Washington at any time of the day or night. Where is the air bridge? Why isn't it working yet? Once, when she called at three o'clock in the morning, Washington time, Dinitz said: "I have no one to talk to right now, Golda, it's still night here." "I don't care what time it is! I yelled at Dinica in response. – Call Kissinger immediately, in the middle of the night. We need help today. Tomorrow may be too late."
The matter got off the ground only after Nixon's intervention: "No matter how many we put – three or three hundred transports – all the blame will still be blamed on us. So act without looking back." The regular air bridge with weapons from the United States started working only on October fourteenth, on the ninth day of the war.
In the early days of the Yom Kippur War, Israel proved its right to exist practically without external assistance. "In the ongoing battles, Israel must stop the offensive of attacking forces on both fronts (Egyptian and Syrian. – Editor's note), before diplomacy can be connected," Kissinger recalled in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Maariv in September 2023. "I made it clear that we will use diplomacy only after it succeeds."
The world of "real politics" is a story about how a country that has become a victim of brazen and undisguised aggression receives help not because it has the right to exist by definition, but because it proved this right, restraining it with what it has in the first days of the invasion. In the world of "real politics", they do not bet on the defeated.
Realpolitik is about the fact that the fate of a country in a war is decided not only at the front, but also in the backstage games of politicians and diplomats. And the war is going on not only for the blood-soaked kilometers of territory, but to a large extent for the best starting positions in the upcoming peace negotiations.
Victories in wars need to be able to defend. This is evidenced by the experience of the Yom Kippur War, which for decades became a trauma for the victors – Israel, and a national holiday for the vanquished – Egypt and Syria.
Despite the victory on both fronts, Israel was forced to cede to Egypt and Syria part of the territories occupied by it in 1967 during the Six-Day War. Kissinger's efforts led to the fact that, in the end, Israel completely withdrew from Sinai in 1979, having concluded peace with Egypt.
This was the beginning of the path called "territories in exchange for peace." Politics, the results of which became apparent in the new war, which began on the seventh of October 2023. And they turned out to be the reverse side for Israel – "no territories, no peace."
Recently, Ukraine likes to quote Moshe Dayan, Israel's Defense minister during the Yom Kippur War: "Our American friends offer us money, weapons and advice. We take money and weapons, but we refuse advice."
Despite the aphorism of this statement, there is a significant exaggeration in it. Of course, it is possible to afford to refuse the advice of those who give weapons, and sometimes it is useful. But this exciting adventure will not last long. This is exactly what the historian Sergei Plokhy said in an interview with the UP: "Senior politicians of Western countries publicly repeat over and over again that they reserve the right for Ukraine to determine what victory is for it. However, they reserve the right to support a certain scenario or not to support it."
Is there an alternative to Realpolitik today in the form of Newpolitic, the existence of which is emphasized by NSDC Secretary Alexei Danilov in his correspondence polemic with Kissinger?
At this point, there could be a few inspiring paragraphs about a new generation of world leaders – fierce thinkers, fearless in the fight against evil, creating a "new chemistry of the world", generating meanings, not scandals, setting unattainable goals and persistently going to them.
But the shortest answer is: if this was the case, it would hardly make any sense for Vladimir Zelensky to meet on September twenty-fourth, 2023, with the grandfather of "real politics", who, according to Danilov, embodies a world with "superpowers", zones of influence, underhand agreements and business instead of morality.
98-year-old Yaroslav Gunko, after his "five minutes of glory", told reporters that due to accusations of Nazism, he was forced to leave Canada to join friends in Latin America. The opportunity to get lost in the Global South is one of the privileges of the "little man" in the big world.
The 100-year-old Kissinger would not have been able to disappear from the radar, even if he wanted to. For the distorted reality we live in today is still pretty much Dr. Kissinger's world.
Author: Mikhail Kriegel
