Henry Kissinger urges Joe Biden to improve US-China ties or nations will 'slide into catastrophe' like World War I
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger feels the next administration led by President-elect Joe Biden should focus on restoring lines of communication with China fast or else the US could risk a military conflict with the Asian power. The former diplomat, who played a major role in orchestrating rapprochement with China in the early 1970s when Richard Nixon was in office, cautioned that if the two major powers do not find a cooperative platform, the world will “slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I”. The veteran also said the advanced military technologies available today would make such a crisis “even more difficult to control”.
“Unless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I,” Kissinger, who is three years short of his centenary, said during the opening session of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum that kicked off on Monday, November 16.
Kissinger, who also served as the national security adviser between 1969 and 1975 and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait in an interview: “America and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they’re conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way.” “The danger is that some crisis will occur that will go beyond rhetoric into actual military conflict.”
Kissinger has warned Trump against taking a harsh stand on China
Kissinger cautioned President Donald Trump, as early as in December 2016 after the latter won the presidential election that year, over his strong rhetoric against China and advised the then president-elect to understand the importance of prolonged co-existence with the Chinese who he said has come a long way in history in terms of experience. He hoped the Trump administration would be able to find a dialogue with China. He said something similar while speaking at a virtual discussion hosted by the Economic Club of New York in October.
The former diplomat, who had once prepared the way for Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972 -- something that had a wide impact on international politics in the Cold War years -- said he hoped that the shared threat of Covid-19 pandemic would serve a common platform of political discussions between the two countries when Biden takes office on January 20.
“If you can look at Covid as a warning, in the sense that in practice it is dealt with by each country largely autonomously, but its long-term solution has to be on a global basis. It should be dealt with as a lesson,” he said.
The US has been at odds with China for some time now, thanks to former President Barack Obama’s geostrategic moves and Trump’s trade moves but it is the outbreak of the pandemic that began in Wuhan, China, and went on to impact America the most – that has damaged relations the most. The Trump administration started calling the coronavirus as a “Chinese virus” and even targeted the World Health Organization, accusing it of favoring Beijing. The US has also been attacking China over the political instability found in places like Hong Kong and border confrontations with India. China’s expansionism in the South China Sea and controversies over technology transfer have also soured its relationship with the US.