Упрощенная HTML-версия
http://interaffairs.ru
Author : Armen Oganesyan
Editor-in-Chief of International Affairs
ON MAY 17, Henry Kissinger's latest book On
China reached the American bookshops. This is a
book about China but the panoramic thinking of
the "last of the Mohicans" of international poli-
tics extended beyond China, a starting point for
the man whose vast experience and an absolute
relevance of whose ideas about what is going on
in the world leaves one duly impressed.
Kissinger believes that the presence or absence of
al Qaeda will be the least of its problems. What might happen, he says, is a de facto parti-
tion, with India and Russia reconstituting the Northern Alliance, and Pakistan hooked to
the Taliban as a backstop against their own encirclement.
He has described a possible scenario for the next world war unrelated, in a direct way, to
China. He is convinced that today "China is an indispensable element in any stabilization
of perilous situations in Korea. Without China's active participation, any attempts to im-
munize Afghanistan against terrorism would be futile." The jihadism threatens China as
well as the Central Asian countries and also Russia. This brings Russia and China closer
together.
What did Kissinger know about China when playing the "China card"? Absolutely nothing,
he admits. From the very beginning the talks between the two countries were strictly con-
fidential which meant that briefings from official agencies or the best of the brain centers
were excluded.
Kissinger studied China's culture and history; tried to grasp the language and the categories
of Chinese civilization until the quantity of knowledge developed into a quality of political
decisions. He overcame all bureaucratic barriers to come up with a suggestion that China
should be recognized as a single and undivided state. The variant which was miraculously
hailed by Beijing and Taiwan offered both a chance to pose, some time in future, as the
principal unifier of the Celestial Empire.
Kissinger easily finds his bearings in history to explain the current collisions and develop-
ments; he does not indulge in abstract futurology. Predictology is his genre; some of his
predictions are rather foreboding. He talks of Pakistan as a "Sarajevo" of the next world
war: "Think proxy half-states; the paranoia of encirclement; the bristling arsenals, in this
case nuclear; the nervous, beleaguered Pakistanis lashing out in passive-aggressive insecurity.
Henry Kissinger on Historical Memory and World War III