The art of pragmatism

Being a high priest of realpolitik, Henry Kissinger, the 99-year-old former US secretary of state, is undoubtedly among the most pragmatic statesmen in recent times who have the grits to accept their miscalculations without any whimper and also adopt their stances as per the changing ground realities.

The recent alteration in his chronic stance on important global topics – the Ukraine war, Russia, Putin and China - is a lucid example of this realpolitik, a sophisticated amalgam of pragmatism and ideology in the domain of international affairs. In June, when Putin was going full throttle to consolidate the Russian positions in the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine, Kissinger propagated a three-pronged narrative.

One: the war will sooner or later be stopped but that if the negotiations were not resumed immediately – he meant Jun-July – then it would become extremely intricate for all the stakeholders to manage and contain its side-effects later on. Two: Russia had been an integral part of European politics for the last 400 years and its role could not be ignored, under-valued and degraded. Per this, subjecteing Russia to an embarrassing defeat in the Donbas would push Putin into panic mode and he might retaliate by resorting to even the battlefield-size nuclear weapons to avenge his humiliation – thus having all the potential to metastasize the war to other parts of Europe. And three, he advocated for ‘status quo ante’, which referred to the restoration of the situation in which Russia could maintain its formal control of Crimea and informal control of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Three months down the road, after witnessing Putin announce partial mobilization of reserves to bolster the weakening Russian posts, Kissinger has made a palpable shift in his stance towards the Ukraine war. Speaking in a Council on Foreign Relations talk on ‘Lessons from History Series: Conversation with Henry Kissinger’ on September 30, he admitted that Russia has “already lost the war,” but stressed that the West must keep contact with Russia in some way. “Some dialogue, maybe on an unofficial level, maybe in an exploratory way is very important”, and that “in the nuclear environment” such an outcome is preferable to a “battlefield decision.”

Kissinger is a very pragmatic practitioner of diplomacy, and he understands the sensitivities of the Russians with regard to retreat from Ukraine. But his views again do not go well with the hawkish elements in Washington and Western capitals who are not ready to listen to anything that resembles treating Moscow as ‘equal’ after the Ukraine debacle. There is another budge in Kissinger’s stance and that is related to the definition of status quo. In May and June, he was advocating that Ukraine should initiate negotiations with Russia even at the cost of ceding the territories captured by Russians and that it should be treated as status quo. Now, though, he has revised his definition of status quo as pre-February 24 international borders between Russia and Ukraine as prerequisite to initiate any direct or indirect dialogue between the two.

Similarly, further corroborating his renewed thinking, Henry Kissinger is now advising Chinese President Xi Jinping to “recalibrate” his support for Russia on Ukraine to prevent a “wall of opposition” from developing in the West as has happened with Russia. Kissinger is of the view that Putin has lost the war in Ukraine, and the outside world should now tackle him quite diligently to muffle the possibility of any desperate step – including the use of nuclear weapons.

The recent spree of missiles on different cities of Ukraine, including Kyiv, as retaliation for the destruction of Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to Russia, has further validated the vindictive nature of Putin. Kissinger truly represents realpolitik, where enemies and friends are never permanent. He is very clear that Russia is gradually losing the war, but he is still preaching for a relatively face-saving formula for Putin when things move to the negotiating table.

Kissinger does not want Putin to be subjected to any “humiliating” treatment at the end of this episode. Perhaps this is the point on which hawks are upset with Kissinger’s doctrine on the Ukraine war and its implications.

The writer is a freelance contributor.