Economy collapse assures China war

Mr Kissinger is reviled by many as a warmonger for his part in the Vietnam war, but he considers the avoidance of conflict between great powers as the focus of his life's work. After witnessing the carnage caused by Nazi Germany and suffering the murder of 13 close relatives in the Holocaust, he became convinced that the only way to prevent ruinous conflict is hard-headed diplomacy, ideally fortified by shared values. "This is the problem that has to be solved," he says. "And I believe I've spent my life trying to deal with it." In his view, the fate of humanity depends on whether America and China can get along. He believes the rapid progress of ai, in particular, leaves them only five-to-ten years to find a way. Mr Kissinger has some opening advice to aspiring leaders: "Identify where you are. Pitilessly." In that spirit, the startingpoint for avoiding war is to analyse China's growing restlessness. Despite a reputation for being conciliatory towards the government in Beijing, he acknowledges that many Chinese thinkers believe America is on a downward slope and that, "therefore, as a result of an historic evolution, they will eventually supplant us." He believes that China's leadership resents Western policymakers' talk of a global rules-based order, when what they really mean is America's rules and America's order. China's rulers are insulted by what they see as the condescending bargain offered by the West, of granting China privileges if it behaves (they surely think the privileges should be theirs by right, as a rising power). Indeed, some in China suspect that America will never treat it as an equal and that it's foolish to imagine it might. However, Mr Kissinger also warns against misinterpreting China's ambitions. In Washington, "They say China wants world domination ...The answer is that they [in China] want to be powerful," he says. "They're not heading for world domination in a Hitlerian sense," he says. "That is not how they think or have ever thought of world order." In Nazi Germany war was inevitable because Adolf Hitler needed it, Mr Kissinger says, but China is different. He has met many Chinese leaders, starting with Mao Zedong. He did not doubt their ideological commitment, but this has always been welded onto a keen sense of their country's interests and capabilities. Mr Kissinger sees the Chinese system as more Confucian than Marxist. That teaches Chinese leaders to attain the maximum strength of which their country is capable and to seek to be respected for their accomplishments. Chinese leaders want to be recognised as the international system's final judges of their own interests. "If they achieved superiority that can genuinely be used, would they drive it to the point of imposing Chinese culture?" he asks. "I don't know. My instinct is No... [But] I believe it is in our capacity to prevent that situation from arising by a combination of diplomacy and force." One natural American response to the challenge of China's ambition is to probe it, as a way to identify how to sustain the equilibrium between the two powers. Another is to establish a permanent dialogue between China and America. China "is trying to play a global role. We have to assess at each point if the conceptions of a strategic role are compatible." If they are not, then the question of force will arise. "Is it possible for China and the United States to coexist without the threat of all-out war with each other? I thought and still think that it [is]." But he acknowledges success is not guaranteed. "It may fail," he says. "And therefore, we have to be militarily strong enough to sustain the failure." The urgent test is how China and America behave over Taiwan. Mr Kissinger recalls how, on Richard Nixon's first visit to China in 1972, only Mao had the authority to negotiate over the island. "Whenever Nixon raised a concrete subject, Mao said, 'I'm a philosopher. I don't deal with these subjects. Let Zhou [Enlai] and Kissinger discuss this.'...But when it came to Taiwan, he was very explicit. He said, 'They are a bunch of counter-revolutionaries. We don't need them now. We can wait 100 years. Someday we will ask for them. But it's a long distance away.'" Mr Kissinger believes that the understanding forged between Nixon and Mao was overturned after only 50 of those 100 years by Donald Trump. He wanted to inflate his tough image by wringing concessions out of China over trade. In policy the Biden administration has followed Mr Trump's lead, but with liberal rhetoric. Mr Kissinger would not have chosen this path with respect to Taiwan, because a Ukrainian-style war there would destroy the island and devastate the world economy. War could also set back China domestically, and its leaders' greatest fear remains upheaval at home.

The fear of war creates grounds for hope. The trouble is that neither side has much room to make concessions. Every Chinese leader has asserted his country's connection to Taiwan. At the same time, however, "the way things have evolved now, it is not a simple matter for the United States to abandon Taiwan without undermining its position elsewhere." Mr Kissinger's way out of this impasse draws on his experience in office. He would start by lowering the temperature, and then gradually build confidence and a working relationship. Rather than listing all their grievances, the American president would say to his Chinese counterpart, "Mr President, the two greatest dangers to peace right now are us two. In the sense that we have the capacity to destroy humanity." China and America, without formally announcing anything, would aim to practise restraint. Never a fan of policymaking bureaucracies, Mr Kissinger would like to see a small group of advisers, with easy access to each other, working together tacitly. Neither side would fundamentally change its position on Taiwan, but America would take care over how it deploys its forces and try not to feed the suspicion that it supports the island's independence.

Mr Kissinger's second piece of advice to aspiring leaders is: "Define objectives that can enlist people. Find means, describable means, of achieving these objectives." Taiwan would be just the first of several areas where the superpowers could find common ground and so foster global stability.

In a recent speech Janet Yellen, America's treasury secretary, suggested that these should include climate change and the economy. Mr Kissinger is sceptical about both. Although he is "all for" action on the climate, he doubts it can do much to create confidence or help establish a balance between the two superpowers. On the economy, the danger is that the trade agenda is hijacked by hawks who are unwilling to give China any room to develop at all.

That all-or-nothing attitude is a threat to the broader search for detente. If America wants to find a way to live with China, it should not be aiming for regime change. Mr Kissinger draws on a theme present in his thought from the very beginning. "In any diplomacy of stability, there has to be some element of the 19th-century world," he says. "And the 19th-century world was based on the proposition that the existence of the states contesting it was not at issue." Some Americans believe that a defeated China would become democratic and peaceful. Yet, however much Mr Kissinger would prefer China to be a democracy, he sees no precedent for that outcome. More likely, a collapse of the communist regime would lead to a civil war that hardened into ideological conflict and only added to global instability. "It's not in our interest to drive China to dissolution," he says. Rather than digging in, America will have to acknowledge China has interests. A good example is Ukraine. China's president, Xi Jinping, only recently contacted Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian counterpart, for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year. Many observers have dismissed Mr Xi's call as an empty gesture designed to placate Europeans, who complain that China is too close to Russia. By contrast, Mr Kissinger sees it as a declaration of serious intent that will complicate the diplomacy surrounding the war, but which may also create precisely the sort of opportunity to build the superpowers' mutual trust. Mr Kissinger begins his analysis by condemning Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. "It was certainly a catastrophic mistake of judgment by Putin at the end," he says. But the West is not without blame. "I thought that the decision to. leave open the membership of Ukraine in nato was very wrong." That was destabilising, be- cause dangling the promise of nato protection without a plan to bring it about left Ukraine poorly defended even as it was guaranteed to enrage not only Mr Putin, but also many of his compatriots.