It’s impossible to predict whether Putin will decide to reach toward Russia’s nuclear arsenal before ending the war, the former secretary of state said.
Henry Kissinger believes President Vladimir Putin miscalculated the international situation and Russia’s own capabilities when he launched the invasion of Ukraine. He will have to end the war when it effectively kills off any chance of Russia remaining a great power in the future, the former secretary of state predicts. Kissinger, who served under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the 1970s, told a Financial Times event over the weekend that he fears the conflict could veer into the nuclear realm. Kissinger played a key role in shaping American foreign policy during the Cold War, his guidance leading to a relaxing of tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Russia, and especially between the U.S. and China, which led to President Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing in 1972. At the FTWeekend Festival in Washington on Saturday, Kissinger told the paper’s U.S. national editor, Edward Luce, about how he managed to split Moscow from Beijing by treating the two enemies differently. Amid hostilities in Europe, Washington should now seek to do the same once again, Kissinger said.
