Critiquing Kissinger’s Pragmatic Comments About the Ukrainian Conflict
Everyone should consider Kissinger’s comments as wishful thinking intended to simply remind US-led Western policymakers of the grand strategic context and inspire scenario forecasting connected to the consequences that their unilateral proxy war on Russia has for the emerging world order.
Former US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, who’s best known for his game-changing realpolitik during the middle of the Old Cold War by pioneering the US’ rapprochement with China, shared some pragmatic comments about the Ukrainian Conflict during this year’s Davos Summit. He called for serious negotiations over resolving it to begin within the next two months at the latest otherwise he warned that the conflict will transform into a war against Russia. Kissinger then reminded everyone how Russia has been part of the European balance of power for nearly half a millennium and that alienating it from the West risked pushing it into an alliance with China. He also called for a return to the status quo ante bellum.
For as pragmatic as these comments are, it’s unrealistic to expect the US-led West to incorporate them into its grand strategy. America deliberately decided to unilaterally undermine Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities through regional “anti-missile system” deployments and erode its conventional security through Ukraine’s de facto incorporation into NATO, including by assisting its “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs) programs that would have literally been game-changing had they been completed. That compelled Moscow to commence its ongoing special military operation in Ukraine aimed at restoring the integrity of its national security red lines in the region more broadly and in Lenin’s unnatural mini-empire in particular.
About that former Soviet Republic, it’s already crumbling after the Kherson Region declared its interest in reunifying with its historic Russian homeland and the rest of Kiev-controlled Ukraine just entered into a de facto confederation with Poland over the weekend. The NATO-led proxy war on Russia through Ukraine has restored the US’ declining unipolar hegemony over the West and is therefore unlikely to be stopped anytime soon, especially because it’s extremely profitable for the military-industrial complex within which many politicians have invested. These facts on the ground very strongly suggest that the status quo ante bellum is impossible to restore since everything has irreversibly changed in the grand strategic context.
Furthermore, Kissinger is incorrect in predicting that Russia will be pushed into an alliance with China and by innuendo risk becoming its “junior partner” since India decisively prevented that scenario by impressively becoming Moscow’s irreplaceable valve from Western pressure. In fact, those two and Iran are jointly seeking to create a third pole of influence in the present bi-multipolar intermediary phase of the global systemic transition to multipolarity. For these reasons, there’s close to no chance that Russia will ever enter into a formal alliance with China as it’s precisely that scenario that inspired India to risk the US-led West’s wrath by providing Moscow with a comprehensive alternative to the People’s Republic. This outcome suits their interests by preserving their complementary strategic autonomy.
Considering this insight, while Kissinger should be praised for his pragmatic comments about the Ukrainian Conflict, everything that he shared is unrealistic except perhaps the possible start of serious peace talks within the next two months. Even that, however, is extremely unlikely to result in restoring the status quo ante bellum that he hopes for. Everyone should therefore consider Kissinger’s comments as wishful thinking intended to simply remind US-led Western policymakers of the grand strategic context and inspire scenario forecasting connected to the consequences that their unilateral proxy war on Russia has for the emerging world order. They shouldn’t be regarded as realistic by any serious observer for the reasons that were explained in this analysis.
