Kissinger at Davos

By Francis P. Sempa

The globalists of the World Economic Forum are meeting at Davos to plan the future world order -- the world’s elites meet there annually to tell the rest of us how we should live our lives under their guidance and tutelage. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to the would-be philosopher kings (and queens) and received a standing ovation for his courageous defiance of Russian aggression. But the speaker who should have received the greatest applause was Henry Kissinger, who at the age of 98 still understands how the world works better than most of his fellow global elites.

In contrast to Zelensky’s Churchillian rhetoric, Kissinger stated that “Parties should be brought to peace talks within the next two months.” “Ukraine,” he said, “should have been a bridge between Europe and Russia, but now, as the relationships are reshaped, we may enter a space where the dividing line is redrawn and Russia is entirely isolated.” This development, Kissinger warned, was pushing Russia into the arms of China, though he phrased it more delicately -- Russia, he said, will “seek a permanent alliance elsewhere.” Kissinger, after all, was one of the architects of President Nixon’s brilliant policy of exploiting the Sino-Soviet rivalry in the 1970s to America’s benefit.

Kissinger called for a return to the status quo ante in Eastern Europe, not the defeat of Russia. Ukrainians, he said, need to “match the heroism that they have shown in war with wisdom for the balance in Europe and the world at large.” This is Kissinger at his Metternichean best, revisiting old but still valid concepts he wrote about in one of his first books, A World Restored, that analyzed the way early 19th century statesmen reconfigured the balance of power in Europe after the Napoleonic wars.

Kissinger also called for “sensitive and informed” diplomacy between the leaders of the United States and China. The U.S. and China, he said, pose the “only military threat that each side needs to deal with continuously.” The challenge of diplomacy, he continued, is for both sides to mitigate and progressively ease tensions. The Taiwan issue, he said, will not disappear, but the challenge for diplomats is to straddle that issue rather than confront it head-on. “Taiwan,” Kissinger said, “cannot be the core of the negotiations between China and the United States.” The United States should still maintain its commitment to oppose the forcible conquest of Taiwan by China. He warned, however, that the Taiwan issue could lead to a “World War I-type situation” where both nations “slide into conflict,” and the consequences of such a development “will be more dire than they were” in 1914-1918.

Here, Kissinger may be too sanguine about China’s desire to ease tensions in the South China Sea. China, instead, appears to approach the western Pacific the way the United States treats Central America and the Caribbean. China’s so-called nine-dash line is equivalent to our Monroe Doctrine. The U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” -- that Nixon and Kissinger put in place 50 years ago before China became an economic and military superpower -- has outlived its usefulness.

But clearly, Henry Kissinger has not outlived his usefulness.