At 99, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger is a living demonstration that you are never too old to learn new things — or to unlearn wrong old things. He has implicitly acknowledged that he dramatically misjudged Russia, its war in Ukraine, and the qualities of Ukraine’s leaders and population.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin described the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its repressive empire as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” suggesting it should be reconstituted, Kissinger urged the US to “show greater sensitivity to Russian complexities.”
After Putin invaded Georgia, Kissinger stated that “isolating Russia is not a sustainable long-range policy.”
When Putin seized eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Kissinger urged Kyiv to adopt neutrality between Russia and the West, saying: “If Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other.”
In May last year, he told the Davos Economic Forum that “negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome. Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante. Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.”
He explained what he meant by “the status quo ante ... the borders existing where the war started on 24 February. Russia would disgorge its conquests thence, but not the territory it occupied nearly a decade ago, including Crimea. That territory could be the subject of a negotiation after a ceasefire.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy responded: “It seems that Mr Kissinger’s calendar is not 2022, but 1938, and he thought he was talking to an audience not in Davos, but in Munich of that time. By the way, in the real year 1938, when Mr Kissinger’s family was fleeing Nazi Germany, nobody heard ... then that it was necessary to adapt to the Nazis instead of fleeing them or fighting them.”
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak was even more scathing: “Unfortunately, even after 10 months of war, Mr Kissinger did not understand anything ... neither the nature of this war, nor its impact on the world order. The recipe that the former secretary of state calls for, but is afraid to speak out loud, is simple: Appease the aggressor by sacrificing part of the territory of Ukraine with guarantees of non-aggression against other eastern European states.”
In July last year, Kissinger responded to the criticism.
“I did not say that territory should be given up. I just implied that it should have a separate status in any negotiations,” he said.
Eastern Ukraine and Crimea should be treated differently “because of their significance to Russia beyond the dispute of the current crisis,” he said.
While praising Zelenskiy’s leadership, Kissinger questioned his global vision.
“He has not expressed himself about what the world will look like after the war with the same clarity and conviction with which he has led the pursuit of the war,” he said.
Zelenskiy has offered his vision of what Ukraine would look like after the war — whole, free and democratically independent. As for the larger world, he has said it would be safer when Russia’s aggression is defeated.
On Jan. 17 last year, at another Davos conference, Kissinger began a partial retreat, saying that NATO membership for Ukraine, which he had long opposed, would be an “appropriate outcome... The idea of a neutral Ukraine under these conditions is no longer meaningful.”
Zelenskiy diplomatically said: “I’m glad Mr Kissinger changed his mind.”
He politely refrained from saying that Ukraine had changed his mind for him.
As Kissinger has been wrong for 30 years regarding Russia and the former Soviet republics, he has also been on the wrong side of history regarding China and Taiwan for half a century.
His errant path started with his negotiation of the Shanghai Communique, the original sin of US-China relations. Kissinger has written that unless the Taiwan question was at least partially resolved to Beijing’s satisfaction, former US president Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 pre-election opening to China would not have been possible.
Kissinger saw his task as giving China as much as he had to, without alienating the US’ pro-Taiwan, anti-China conservatives. The formula he and then-Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) devised was for each side to state its position on Taiwan.
China made its usual emphatic claim that Taiwan belongs exclusively to the People’s Republic of China. The US side did “not challenge” the Chinese position, but merely “acknowledged” it.
That choice of ambiguous terminology, open to contrary interpretations, sent China and the US in divergent directions. Beijing — self-interestedly and predictably — has since asserted that Washington agreed with its position, which it called the “one China principle.”
The US maintains that “acknowledging” Beijing’s position is not the same as agreeing with it, and that “not challenging” its claim as the sole governing authority of China does not concede that Taiwan is part of that “one China.” Washington holds that Taiwan’s future can only be decided peacefully and by the government and people of Taiwan.
However, the nuances of Washington’s argument escape many people. Foreign governments and populations are more likely to equate “acknowledgement” with “agreement,” and to conflate the “one China policy” and the “one China principle.”
Kissinger has blended the concepts to Beijing’s advantage, gradually adopting China’s position as his own. At the Asia Society in 2007, he warned Taiwan to get serious about coming to terms with Beijing on its future because “China will not wait forever.”
This is consistent with when Mao Zedong (毛澤東) said during their 1972 talks that Beijing could wait 50 or 100 years to take Taiwan, Kissinger said he was surprised that China “would wait that long.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), sharing Kissinger’s impatience, is preparing to act using Mao’s lower number.
As he has partially done regarding Russia and Ukraine, Kissinger should correct his flawed judgement regarding China and Taiwan, which has already proved him wrong with its sustained democratic viability.
Kissinger’s latest book on historic world leaders includes Nixon, whose opening to China Kissinger was glad to join. Yet, he has refused to follow Nixon’s reassessment of China’s unchanged hostility: “We may have created a Frankenstein[’s monster].”
Nor does Kissinger heed Nixon’s 1994 wisdom that China and Taiwan “are permanently separated politically.”
It is late — but not yet too late — for Kissinger to change his blemished record. To enhance deterrence, which failed in Ukraine, he should support an unequivocal US commitment to defend Taiwan.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the US secretary of defense from 2005 to 2006, and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Russia invaded Georgia, and was involved in US Department of Defense discussions about Washington’s response.
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