Kissinger has world fuming

K. P. Nayar

Strategic Analyst

Never before in the annals of diplomacy has a 99-year-old man – or woman – annoyed so many people all over the world in a span of 35 minutes. By suggesting ‘a return to the status quo ante’, and arguing that ‘pursuing the war beyond that point will not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself’, diplomat and statesman Henry Kissinger set the cat among the pigeons at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos two weeks ago. His remarks had intercontinental reverberations.

These lobbies have a one-point agenda: get Delhi to stop buying Russian arms and switch to US weapon supplies.

‘Henry sent a warship to protect the murderers in Dhaka,’ said a thinker and a former editor-in-chief in India, who is a friend of Kissinger, in a conversation with me. ‘He became thus an accessory to murder.’ Another editor-in-chief, this one from Sweden’s biggest newspaper asked: ‘Hasn’t that been Kissinger’s legacy throughout his public life?’

No practitioner of foreign policy in history has been interviewed or engaged in public conversations, such as the one at WEF, more than Kissinger. To understand what he said, it is necessary to go back to a 1972 interview he gave to Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist who bagged the most sought-after interviews of world leaders for three decades from the 1960s. ‘The main point arises from the fact that I have always acted alone,’ Kissinger said. Her question was about the source of the German-American statesman’s popularity. Throughout his work in the US government, Kissinger was fortunate to have bosses like President Richard Nixon, who were elevated by the diplomat’s intellect. They let him act alone, rather he convinced them to let him act alone.

Now that he is his own boss, Kissinger can no longer get away with his outrages. There is no buffer between him and his unconventional, but eminently realistic ideas. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, slammed Kissinger as belonging to 1938, not 2022 – a reference to the Munich Agreement, through which Adolf Hitler’s Germany annexed western Czechoslovakia. Other Ukrainian leaders said Kissinger wanted to repeat the history of Nazi Germany by advocating what he did in Davos.

Because of a herd mentality in the media, most people in this country did not get to hear or read about some very significant remarks about India that Kissinger made in his conversation with Klaus Schwab, founder and Executive Chairman of the WEF. Kissinger’s suggestion that Ukraine should cede territory to Russia and end the war excluded everything else that was worthy of attention.

Arguing that ‘the outcome of this turning point’ — the war in Ukraine — ‘will affect relations between groupings of countries’, Kissinger said: ‘Affected by the balance that will emerge, the rise of countries like India and Brazil will have to be integrated into an international system. They seem to me to be the key issues, together with the fact that the Ukraine conflict has produced a rupture in the economic arrangements that have been made in the period before, so that the definition and operation of a global system will have to be reconsidered.’

In India, a myth propagated by lobbies which want to end India’s neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is that a weakened Russia will become a pawn in the hands of a rising – or risen – China. Some pro-western lobbyists conjure up imaginary and incredulous scenarios that China will go so far as to persuade Russia to stop arms supplies to India in the event of further deterioration in Sino-Indian relations. These lobbies have a one-point agenda: get New Delhi to stop buying Russian arms and switch to US weapon supplies.

Kissinger, a Europe-born descendant who has lived the continent’s history for one year short of a century, argues that Russia’s heart is in Europe. ‘Looked at from a long-term point of view, Russia has been, for 400 years, an essential part of Europe, and European policy over that period of time has been affected, fundamentally, by its European assessment of the role of Russia...on a number of occasions as the guarantor, or the instrument, by which the European balance could be re-established.’

Given that history, Indians would benefit from his proposal in Davos that the war in Ukraine should be ended, that ‘negotiations on peace need to begin in the next two months so that the outcome of the war should be outlined’. Most important of all, from New Delhi’s viewpoint, is this: ‘Current policy should keep in mind the restoration of this role (Russia’s historical role in Europe) is important to develop, so that Russia is not driven into a permanent alliance with China.’

This should be a reality check for Indians. If the Modi government ends its policy of abstentions at the UN on Russia-related resolutions, it will be one more step in the international community that will drive Russia towards a closer alliance with China. As long as India remains a member of the UN Security Council, any such step would have implications that go well beyond what happens bilaterally between India and Russia on the one hand, and between India and China on the other.

It is not public knowledge that as Security Council members, India and China often coordinate their positions at the UN on a variety of issues, including Afghanistan, climate actions and piracy, to mention a few. While officials in New Delhi are bogged down in military talks about the disputed border in Ladakh, leaving little room for other bilateral matters, the Security Council is the only window that allows India and China to engage each other. For those on the Indian side who are engaged in this process, Kissinger’s concern that ‘Russia is not driven into a permanent alliance with China’ will make eminent sense that is obscured by myopia in New Delhi fuelled by lobbies, especially defence lobbies, whose interest is commercial over everything else.