“Parties should be brought to peace talks within the next two months. Ukraine should’ve 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. We are facing a situation now where Russia could alienate itself completely from Europe and seek a permanent alliance elsewhere. This may lead to Cold War-like diplomatic distances, which will set us back decades. We should strive for long-term peace.”
Kissinger, whose gross misunderstanding of the trajectory of the world led directly to America subsidizing the growth and armament of the its most powerful strategic rival, China, is once again allowing his Sinophilia and anachronistic obsession with Russian power preordain his flawed conclusions.
Firstly, it must be made clear that contrary to the ramblings of those “realists” whose theory supersedes reality, Russia is no longer a state with its own “security interests,” as such. The entire state apparatus has been coopted by a single man, and thus all state actions are singularly driven by that one man’s interests, a tautology that could be broken by his death. The fraud, perpetuated by appeasement leftists and neo-Nazi sympathizers alike, that NATO posed a threat to Russia. and that the war was triggered by NATO encroachment on its borders, two decades ago, was exposed as an obviously false justification by Putin’s response to Sweden and Finland’s applications for NATO accession, now utterly encircling Russia, which amounted to nil. While it is impossible to prove, Putin’s primary causus belli for the initial campaign to decapitate the Kiev government and install a puppet regime was driven by two things: solidifying domestic power by creating a conflict as a trap that would expose dissenters, and then allow them to be purged, but more importantly removing Zelenskyy, whose power, whatever flaws the regime may have had, represented an ideological challenge to Putin’s autarchic and cynical kleptocracy.
As such, Putin seeks no political rapproachment, other than that which might bring about enough sanctions relief that he can begin rearmament in earnest. He is solely focused on his domestic power, and whatever strategic agreement he may make with China, which is the implication of Kissinger’s statement, will only be instrumental towards that aim. China, while anti-Western, is not interested in further bankrolling the kind of instability provoking behavior that Putin has displayed, which has even shaken Chinese domestic stability, an inviolable red line for the CCP. The suggestion, by some, that China would go so far as to “prop up” an ailing Russia which no longer respects sovereign borders is contradicted by their statements and actions, which have at no point yet condoned the invasion.
Any type of Western rapproachment with Putin, besides undermining the entire world order by tacitly sanctioning the very behavior that the UN charter itself explicitly outlawed, would not create peace, it would instead accelerate Putin’s attempt to stockpile munitions and arms, and reform his military, after its devastatingly poor performance in Ukraine.
Lastly, the notion that peace talks and settlements can be conducted with Putin, the leader of a country that refuses to admit that it is actually at war is preposterous. The Russian state, under penalty of imprisonment, still maintains that the invasion of Ukraine was not a war but a special military operation, conducted unilaterally, and within an area whose sovereignty, borders, but most importantly government is not even tacitly accepted as legitimate. It therefore belies all logic that Putin could then take concessions and agree to a lasting peace with a state government that the state is not even legally engaged in war against. Such an action between Russia and Ukraine would legitimize the Ukrainian state which is untenable for Putin, and with the West would amount to NATO illegally parceling out the sovereign territory of third country as a consolation prize for violating the UN charter and upending the entire world order, which should be untenable for any civilized state. The end of the “special military operation” will be as unilateral and arbitrary as its beginning, and no token concessions, other than the end of a separate sovereign Ukraine, has any remote possibility of cutting short Putin’s attempt to carve out enough of Ukraine to make it an unsustainable rump state. His aim now is to leave it just weak enough to fully conquer in ten years, after Kissinger and Biden are long dead, and once Western states have forgotten and forgiven Putin and allowed him to rearm, and then finish the job.
Kissinger’s statements in full:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/05/kissinger-these-are-the-main-geopolitical-challenges-facing-the-world-right-now/