One of the few major issues that Democrats and Republicans agree on and have no problem passing bipartisan resolutions is the issue of the Chinese enemy. At the end of last February, when the echoes of the crisis of the spy balloon launched by Beijing and detected over the skies of the United States still resounded, a parliamentary committee constituted by both formations to face the competition from the Asian giant declared that the confrontation with the distant country is "an existential struggle over what life will be like" in the remainder of the century. Subsequently, the White House, the CIA and the FBI launched a whole battery of accusations against Xi Jinping and his followers: the covid originated "in an incident in a laboratory controlled by the Chinese government" and those responsible know it and hide it ; Beijing has plans to "arm" Russia in the war against Ukraine; Xi has ordered his army to be "ready to invade Taiwan in 2027," they said.
Without doubting that Washington ends up being right in all of this, the level of aggressiveness and little diplomatic caution with which, in an atmosphere of unusual consensus, the Joe Biden Administration and the conservative opposition harassed the second power on the planet, which they continue to do.
Until now, almost no weighty figure in the United States has questioned the continuous pimpampum against the country that little by little the first power has been turning into its number one enemy, ahead of Russia. And it has had to be the dean of Western diplomacy who, reappearing on the occasion of his imminent 100th birthday, next Saturday, has given a wake-up call to call for containment and prudence.
Henry Kissinger is neither a saint nor a dove of international relations. His decisive intervention as an accomplice and partly instigator of the dictatorships in Chile and Argentina is documented, as well as his support for the repression of the Pakistani dictatorship against Bengalis in 1971. And his role in the bombing of Cambodia and Laos between 1969 and 1970 is still under scrutiny. The digital magazine The Intercept, key in the leak of documents of former CIA agent Edward Snowden, plans to publish an investigative report on Tuesday that will leave Kissinger in a worse place than he already occupies in the history of those attacks designed to stop the North Vietnamese army. and the Vietcong in the Vietnam War.
But the man who was National Security adviser (1969-1975) and Secretary of State (1973-1977) under the mandates of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, as well as an informal adviser and friend of former Democratic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is also a one of the most heard voices in American foreign policy. And his legacy includes the arrangement, through a covert visit to China in 1971, of the détente between Washington and Beijing through what would be the first official visit by a US president, Richard Nixon, to Mao Zedong's People's Republic: a key operation for the future of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and, from today's perspective, an unavoidable benchmark for managing the US relationship with the Xi Jinping government.
In the interview with The Economist published today by La Vanguardia, he suggests recovering détente with China with objectives that in part, and saving the distances due to the great changes in the geopolitical tableau, may be reminiscent of those achieved in 1972; especially with a view to reining in Russia.
The veteran diplomat calls for "lowering the temperature" with Beijing instead of repeating over and over again the memorial of China's grievances to the US. He defends seeking "common territories" to avoid a disaster in Taiwan. And he suggests that if the rapprochement with Beijing helped Washington gain ground against the USSR 50 years ago, perhaps now the close, if suspicious, relationship between China and Russia might not be entirely negative; In this sense, the former Secretary of State distances himself from those who simply despise Xi's negotiation offers to end the war in Ukraine.
Kissinger cannot see out of his right eye, has hearing problems and has undergone several heart operations. But according to Ted Koppel, a CBS journalist who has followed him for half a century and also interviewed him a few days ago, the influential former Secretary of State works 15-hour days, maintains his lucidity and remains fully attentive to current affairs.
Thus, the winner of one of the most controversial Nobel prizes in the history of the award, which he obtained in 1973 for the peace negotiations in Vietnam that did not arrive until two years later, is obsessed with the dangers of artificial intelligence. Its development seems difficult to control and believes that it is another of the issues that Washington and Beijing have to talk about to prevent new technology from exacerbating their confrontation and, as could also happen as a result of the tensions over Taiwan, lead to a World War.
Kissinger is not listened to carefully only in the United States and its wide area of influence. Beijing also takes him into consideration. The Chinese international television channel controlled by the country's Communist Party, CGTN, often echoes his views. Like the one that "The United States and China must understand each other more fully and cultivate a relationship that is more compatible with peace and progress in the world", which the former Secretary of State pronounced in January, when he received the annual award from the Chamber of Commerce. China-USA
Henry Kissinger is not a paragon of virtue, but he knows what he is talking about.
