The Sunday Times Magazine • 37“But it often happens that people who
complete one great task can’t apply their
qualities to the execution of it, which is how
to institutionalise it.” Carefully switching to
discuss today’s leaders in general, he adds:
“I would not be telling the truth if I said
that the level [of leadership] is appropriate
to the challenge.”
I counter that we are surely being given
a masterclass in leadership by the president
of Ukraine, the unlikely figure of the
comedian turned war hero.
“There’s no question that Zelensky has
performed a historic mission,” Kissinger
agrees. “He comes from a background that
never appeared in Ukrainian leadership at any
period in history” — a reference to Zelensky
being, like Kissinger, Jewish. “He was an
accidental president because of frustration
with domestic politics. And then he was faced
with the attempt by Russia to restore Ukraine
to a totally dependent and subordinate
position. And he has rallied his country and
world opinion behind it in a historic
manner. That’s his great achievement.”
The question remains, however, “Can he
sustain that in making peace, especially a
peace that implies some limited sacrifice?”
I ask for his thoughts on Zelensky’s
adversary, the Russian president, Vladimir
Putin, whom he has met on numerous
occasions, dating back to a serendipitous
encounter in the early 1990s, when Putin
was deputy mayor of St Petersburg.
“I thought he was a thoughtful analyst,”
Kissinger says, “based on a view of Russia as
a sort of mystic entity that has held itself
together across 11 time zones by a sort of
spiritual effort. And in that vision Ukraine
has played a special role. The Swedes, the
French and the Germans came through
that territory [when they invaded Russia]and they were in part defeated because it
exhausted them. That’s his [Putin’s] view.”
Yet that view is at odds with those periods
of Ukraine’s history that differentiated it
from the Russian empire. Putin’s problem,
Kissinger says, is that “he’s head of a
declining country” and “he’s lost his sense
of proportion in this crisis”. There is “no
excuse” for what he has done this year.
Kissinger reminds me of the article he
wrote in 2014, at the time of the Russian
annexation of Crimea, in which he argued
against the idea of Ukraine joining Nato,
proposing instead a neutral status like that
of Finland, and warning that to continue
talking in terms of Nato membership risked
war. Now, of course, it is Finland that is
proposing to join Nato, along with Sweden.
Is this ever-enlarging Nato now too big?
“Nato was the right alliance to face an
aggressive Russia when that was the principal
threat to world peace,” he replies. “And Nato
has grown into an institution reflecting
European and American collaboration in an
almost unique way. So it’s important to
maintain it. But it’s important to recognise
that the big issues are going to take place in
the relations of the Middle East and Asia to
Europe and America. And Nato with respect
to that is an institution whose components
don’t necessarily have compatible views. They
came together on Ukraine because that was
reminiscent of [older] threats and they did
very well, and I support what they did.
“The question will now be how to end
that war. At its end a place has to be found
for Ukraine and a place has to be found for
Russia — if we don’t want Russia to become
an outpost of China in Europe.”
I remind him of a conversation we had in
Beijing in late 2019, when I asked him if we
were already in “Cold War II”, but with
China now playing the part of the Soviet
Union. He replied, memorably, “We are in
the foothills of a cold war.” A year later he
upgraded that to “the mountain passes of
a cold war”. Where are we now?
“Two countries with the capacity to
dominate the world” — the US and China
— “are facing each other as the ultimate
contestants. They are governed by
incompatible domestic systems. And this is
occurring when technology means that a war
would set back civilisation, if not destroy it.”
In other words, Cold War II is potentially
even more dangerous than Cold War I?
Kissinger’s answer is yes, because both
superpowers now have comparable
economic resources (which was never the
case in Cold War I) and the technologies of
destruction are even more terrifying,
especially with the advent of artificial
intelligence. He has no doubt that China
and America are now adversaries. “Waiting
for China to become western” is no longer
a plausible strategy. “I do not believe that
world domination is a Chinese concept, but
it could happen that they become so
©HENRY KISSINGER, GETTY IMAGES, REX powerful. And that’s not in our interest.”
“Putin is the head of a declining country.
He’s lost his sense of proportion in this crisis”
From top: Kissinger, back to camera,
looks on as Le Duc Tho initials the Paris
Peace Accords in January 1973; with
Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2017; and
with Mao Zedong and Ford, 1975