Henry Kissinger in Paris in 2006Getty
The lifespan of this German-born diplomat,whose Jewish family fled the Nazis in the 1930s,covers the gamut of American international. The decade of his birth was a period of US isolationism,when Americans heeded George Washington’s warning in his final presidential address about dangerous foreign entanglements. In his 18th year,America entered World War II,the first step towards assuming its modern role as global police officer.
Friendly have claimed that the young Kissinger,who witnessed combat at the Battle of the Bulge,was an idealist who believed in America’s messianic postwar mission to spread freedom around the world. But this one-time Harvard academic,who served as Richard Nixon’s national security advisor and then as secretary of state,is better known,of course,for his realpolitik,the pursuit of a foreign policy based on a,and often amoral,assessment of US national interests.
Although viewed by his many critics as a warmonger,who expanded the conflict in Vietnam by advocating the secret bombing of Cambodia,his many admirers see his main policy legacy as detente – the easing of great power tensions between the US and the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. That is partly why,even in his dotage,his views are so eagerly sought. For the past five decades he has been thinking about how geopolitical rivals can avoid a third world war,a question that has become more pressing after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Xi Jinping’s revival of Chinese nationalism.
Kissinger is worried,tellingThe Economist over a marathon eight hours of interviews that the world is “in a classic pre-World War I situation”. Generative Artificial Intelligence,and the development of unstoppable weapons,makes the situation more perilous still. “We are on a path to great-power confrontation,” he,because “both sides have convinced themselves that the other represents a strategic danger”. Happy birthday.
So often,the US-China is framed in reference to a foreign affairs thinker even more antique than Kissinger:the Athenian general,who postulated in the fourth century BC that war became an inevitability when an emerging power sought to displace the prevailing hegemonic power. But what this model does not accommodate is the geopolitical dynamic that we arguably find ourselves confronting now,when the two major powers fear they are in decline. The “Thucydides Trap” may well be less of a concern than what might be called the snare of status anxiety.
The security leaders warn China's actions in the Pacific are a particular threat.
America,obviously,is not in a good place. The debt ceiling standoff is but the latest example of a self-destructive politics centred on performative rage rather than practical governance. What were once routine national events – raising the debt limit,electing House speakers,nominating and confirming Supreme Court justices,certifying presidential elections,peacefully transferring power – have now become destabilising and even violent.
Even after his role in inciting January 6,an American insurrection,Donald Trump remains the clear front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. His main rival,. The announcement of his candidacy came this week on Twitter with the billionaire Elon Musk,an event marred by disastrous technical glitches that not only seemed amateurish but emblematic – a “DeSaster”,went the obvious joke.
American exceptionalism has become an almost entirely negative construct:something we associate with pictures of schoolchildren fleeing their classrooms amidst the sound of semi-automatic gunfire,and of police officers resorting all too readily to the use of lethal force. More so than a beacon,the country looks so often like a dumpster fire. Dysfunction in Washington is also disrupting US diplomacy abroad,as Australia and Papua New Guinea can attest.
Increasingly,it looks as if the US is simultaneously fighting two Cold Wars:one with China,the other with itself. I have even heard it posited that war with China is the only way the US will reunite,although the attacks of September 11 only fleetingly brought the country together,and the mass deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic became an accelerant of polarisation.
It is not just in cancelled international visits that America’s domestic difficulties are affecting its foreign affairs. Joe Biden’s determination to defend democracy at home has fuelled his messianic desire to challenge authoritarianism abroad. His domestic and foreign agendas have become entwined,since Vladimir Putin,Xi Jinping and Donald Trump all pose a threat to the US rules-based order.
The invasion of Ukraine has enabled him to rally the West and claim the mantle once more of leader of the free world. On China,he frequently strays from the longstanding American script of strategic ambiguity over Taiwan,stating explicitly that US forces would defend the island against a Chinese invasion. Rhetorically,he frames the struggle in precisely the kind of Manichean terms that arch-realists such as Kissinger have sought to scrub from America’s diplomatic lexicon.
There is mounting evidence,too,that China is on an upward trajectory. Last year its population shrunk for the first time since 1961,presaging long-term problems in the all-important worker-to-retiree ratio. Last month,. For the Chinese Communist Party,the Chinese compact – in which rising standards of living compensate for the denial of personal freedoms – is becoming harder to sustain. Not since 2010 has China achieved double-digit GDP growth.
Illustration:John Shakespeare
The handling of the lengthy COVID-19 lockdowns has given rise to a level of public disquiet not witnessed since Tiananmen Square,much of it personally directed towards Xi Jinping. Talk of “the Chinese Century” now sounds premature.
Since 2021,American academics Michael Beckley and Hal Brands,the aptly named Henry A. Kissinger Professor at Johns Hopkins University,have been warning of the dangers of the “peaking power trap”,and how,historically,it has often been a slowdown that made ascendant powers become “brash and aggressive”. Over the past 18 months,China’s position has weakened further,heightening concerns that Xi is ramping up the nationalism in order to distract from his domestic difficulties.
When foreign policy becomes a means of diverting public attention and camouflaging national weakness,global affairs become more perilous. At present,both the US and China are more prone to this kind of hazardous thinking.
During the G7 summit,Joe Biden predicted a thaw with Beijing,and US officials stress they do not want to “decouple” their interconnected economies. “De-risking” is the voguish term. But in recent months there have been flare-ups over spy balloons,semi-conductor technology and the first phase of a bilateral trade deal between Washington and Taipei. Only this week,a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman complained:“The US says it wants to speak to the Chinese side while seeking to suppress China through all possible means.”
After the messianic tone of the Morrison years,which inflamed Beijing,the Albanese government can point to recent successes in an approach incorporating a large dose of realpolitik:“Co-operate where we can,disagree where we must.” Witness what happened in March. In the same month that Anthony Albanese celebrated the sub-aqua equivalent of aTop Gun moment in San Diego,where he joined Joe Biden and the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to celebrate the AUKUS deal,Australian exports to China hit a record high after Beijing lifted the remaining restrictions on coal imports.
High-risk times unquestionably lie ahead,and not solely because of the belligerence of Xi’s China. What if Trump were to return to the White House? What if DeSantis becomes president,an Ivy League populist so captive to the culture wars that he questioned during COVID-19 whether Washington should maintain diplomatic relations with an “off-the-rails” Australia because of the severity of our lockdowns.
It is the kind of diplomatic dilemma that Henry Kissinger likes to ponder:how does Australia conduct its foreign affairs when its chief defence and its main trading may both be in decline?
Nick Bryant is author ofWhen America Stopped Being Great:The History of the Present.
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