Wanted: A Kissingerian foreign policy

AGAINST the backdrop of growing global turbulence, including the threat of Russian aggression in Europe, rising military tensions between the United States and China in East Asia, and an Arab-Israeli war in the Middle East, it’s important to recall the legacy of renowned diplomat Henry Kissinger, a former adviser to American presidents, who died last Wednesday (Nov 29) at the age of 100.

Indeed, while serving as White House national security adviser, and later as secretary of state, Dr Kissinger had launched several diplomatic initiatives that helped transform the then Cold-War-dominated international system and provided it with relative stability at a time when many dreaded the risk of a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union.

On the top of the list of Dr Kissinger’s diplomatic triumphs was the so-called “opening to China”, overseeing the American clandestine outreach in the early 1970s to the People’s Republic of China, resulting eventually in the restoration of a full diplomatic relationship between Washington and Beijing.