Henry Kissinger pushed Trump to work with Russia to box In China - Polidicks

https://www.thedailybeast.com/henry-kissinger-pushed-trump-to-work-with-russia-to-box-in-china Henry Kissinger suggested to President Donald Trump that the United States should work with Russia to contain a rising China. The former secretary of state—who famously engineered the tactic of establishing diplomatic relations with China in order to isolate the Soviet Union—pitched almost the inverse of that idea to Trump during a series of private meetings during the presidential transition, five people familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. Inside the administration, the proposal has found receptive ears, with some of Trump’s top advisers—in addition to officials in the State Department, Pentagon, and the National S ecurity Council—also floating a strategy of using closer relations with Moscow to contain Beijing, according to White House and Capitol Hill insiders. But the idea has been complicated by the president’s deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has caused countless domestic political headaches. Both the White House and the National Security Council declined to comment. Kissinger's office did not return a request for comment. The mere fact that Kissinger was given an audience to make his pitch—he’s met with Trump at least three times since the 2016 campaign—is a testament to his tremendous staying power in top political circles, despite a controversial foreign policy track record that includes numerous accusations of war crimes. It also is a reflection of how dramatically geopolitical relations have changed during the course of his lifetime. During the 2016 presidential campaign, various figures in the Trump orbit—not just Kissinger—discussed a strategy of shoring up relations not only with Russia, but also with Japan, the Philippines, India, Middle Eastern countries, and others as a wide-ranging international counterweight to what was pitched as the dominant Chinese threat. In theory, the partner-with-Russia-to-combat-China strategy—regardless of its motivations—is not entirely without merit, experts say, if only to break up the partnership developing between Presidents Putin and Xi themselves. “China and Russia have a very similar worldview right now and they're supporting each other pretty strongly. I don’t see a lot of cracks,” said Lyle Goldstein, a Russia and China expert at the U.S. Naval War College. But there’s a very good reason the “reverse Nixon” strategy hasn’t been implemented yet. It’s just not geopolitically realistic. “China is the greater long term strategic challenge,” said John Rood, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, at the Aspen Security Forum. “But in many ways, Russia is the larger near term threat because of the overwhelming lethality of its nuclear arsenal and also because of some the behavior that the Russian government has exhibited.”

Realpolitik

Somehow I'd imagine you would have a different feeling towards Russia were they working against the Republicans and not the Democrats in our election process.

Idk why, I see Russia as opportunistic regardless of which party is in power.

Russia is the worlds troll and it cant really do much about it at this point or at least within the century. NATO is breathing down Moscow's back, South America is its own, China doesn't like Russia almost as much as NATO, the middle east has repeatedly told the USSR to piss off and when the Istanbul canal is built Russia is going to get a big bold "fuck you" from Turkey. All that's left is central Asia and that's not really an exciting prospect unless your a kumiss aficionado. The USSR's aggression has already boxed in the Russian Federation. Sure they take out their frustrations on countries smaller than them and occasionally score the jackpot with foreign election meddling but fundamentally the rest of the world is prepared to tell them to fuck off at a moments notice and is actively taking measures to prevent another USSR situation from happening again.

Considering Russia as an "Opportunistic Ally" is more of an abusive relationship. And there's a good 99.9% chance Russia ain't the bottom of the relationship.

The difference between Nixon working with China in an effort to isolate Russia is that China wasn't hacking into Democrat's computers, or phishing for DNC emails, or rooting through voter registration databases, or fucking with our infrastructure. In a world where all of this was happening to Republicans in an effort to get Clinton into the presidency I really doubt you would be so passive about it, but because it works for you and because Trump says China is the enemy then yes, thats just "realpolitik".

The fuck? Henry Fucking Kissinger is still around and advising the president?!

What fucking year is it.

Yeah I was surprised he's still alive

Forget Kissinger, we need KillInger with his magic murder bag

That's not really true. China clashed with our interests up until it failed to export its ideology (disaster in Malaysia and Indonesia) and started dealing with internal party squabbles, as well as had growing divisions with the USSR and Albania that it prioritized with the three worlds theory. Like with Russia, we then had a window of opportunity after ideological thaw. We also had (maybe still have) a similar one with Russia after it, like China in the 60s/70s, turned its back on rigid Soviet ideology and focused on narrow Russian national interests. We can work with that if we act similarly without an ideological bent like we did with China, but we didn't. Instead there was disinterest in Russian liberalization, in contrast to the aid we gave to Poland, and an uncompromising, overtly ideological 'end of history' triumphalism that meant we didn't enfranchise Russia into the new post-91 European community and instead antagonized its populace as they slid into conservatism and siege mentality through state and NGO support for the very unpopular, corrupt Russian liberals there and regime change elsewhere. Kissinger's brand of realpolitik would have helped with this bargaining and denying of a disenfranchised popular base for Putinism, which didn't solidify as we know it until 2011 and the failure of the reset. Unfortunately neocons and third way democrats didn't believe in that. As Jeffrey Sachs, an economist employed by the Open Society Foundation for advising post-communist transitions for both Russia and Poland, notes: My hopes were soon dashed. The year 1993 was even more dreadful than 1992. When the incoming Clinton Administration declared “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” they meant it. Foreign policy issues were remarkably low on the radar screen. There was absolutely no interest in a significant assistance plan for Russia, nor did key officials on Russian policy have any knowledge of economics. At that point the Treasury Secretary was Lloyd Bentsen, and neither he nor his deputy Roger Altman had any interest or knowledge of this issue. Larry Summers, who might have, was just getting started as an Undersecretary of Treasury. Key foreign policy campaign adviser Michael Mandelbaum refused to join the Administration in part because he realized that Clinton indeed would not support a major Western assistance effort to Russia. I traveled to Moscow about a half-dozen times during 1993 to meet with Federov and to lead the MFU. I tried, and failed, to get the World Bank to focus on the growing social crisis, especially health. It was quite obvious that there was a critical shortage of drugs, medical equipment, and other basic health needs, and that this would spill over into a public health crisis. Indeed, various epidemics (diphtheria, multi-drug resistant TB) broke out, without any Western attention or help. [...] The Government’s privatization strategy was to move radically and quickly, so that there would be no reversal in political power and no reversion to a communist regime. The idea was to push the assets out into private hands as quickly as possible, even if corruption and unfairness ensued. This was not my approach, and I disagree with it. I was worried from the start of this process in Poland that corruption in privatization or manifest unfairness would not only damage the economy but also damage the society, by undermining the support for democracy, economic reforms, and social justice. [...] During my final trip to Moscow in early 1995, the infamous “loans-for-shares” deal was just getting underway. This deal involved a massive and corrupt transfer of natural resource enterprises to the Government’s cronies, disguised as a collateralized loan to the Russian Government by Russian banks. The arrangements were blatantly corrupt from the start. I spent my final visit in Moscow visiting Western officials to warn them about what was happening. I felt that my antennae were pretty sound at that point, and that my perspective would be helpful to head off a disaster. I was stunned by the obtuseness of the response, from the IMF, an OECD visiting mission, and later from very senior U.S. officials, including Larry Summers. Trump is a blowback to this foreign policy establishment which is opposed to the realism of Kissinger (and the non-interventionism of progressives, by the way), while his Democratic opponent was at the heart of it and, because she's neoliberal and got rich giving speeches to various elites, was tied to the wider idea of the liberal international order which the increasingly angry right in America, Europe, and Russia now all together loathe as anti-popular and not existing outside of an elite and their world cities. At the same time, progressives aren't to thrilled with things either. So you get articles like this and this fretting about the death of the end of history and cracks in the liberal center. We had and possibly still have a similar window with Russia, which aligns with US realpolitik interests in the Middle East and our rivalry with China. It takes some concessions in our high-on-unipolarity hawkishness though. First is permitting German-Russian cooperation that counterbalances Atlantic interests and opposes hawkish US foreign policy, and acknowledging it is better than Chinese-Russian alignment that outright undermines our liberal-democratic unipolar world. This means reforming NATO away from its 'keep Germany down and Russia out' philosophy. We also have to make concessions to Russian frozen conflicts in order resolve underlying fSU ethnic and historical conflicts that we attempted to expand the EU/NATO with, acknowledging that nationalist West Ukrainian power in Kiev is unacceptable for a young multicultural state and centralized Georgian rule over former ethnic minority autonomous oblasts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia is unacceptable. Additionally, we need to stop toppling Arab nationalist regimes to the benefit of Sunni reactionaries, it was key to the failure of the reset as it destabilized the Middle East which can ultimately reach the Caucasus. Kissinger was right with China, and he's right here again. He showed that exporting democracy is not always in Western interests and that realpolitik can be appropriate. It's never been more appropriate with the rise of great power conflict, the failure to sow democracy in less developed parts of the world, and domestic backlash to an unsustainable system. It's also never been more critical. The world economy is rapidly changing, we simply can't afford to ignore Russia like we could before in the 90s. China is creating a 'Silk Road Economic Belt' through Russia into Europe and this is going to create a new international balance between the three at our expense, and before the Ukraine crisis Russia was less interested in it and moreso, in Putin's words, a "common market from Lisbon to Vladivostok". We need its cooperation, especially in the Middle East.

it makes sense for trump to be advised by literal war criminals

the problem with this is Russia does not want to work with the international order or even remotely share its values. With china we had someone who was ideologically opposed to the USSR and willing to work with the western order. In fact China and Russia have been playing off this axis of mutual competition with the US for years now

What I don't understand is why don't they play nice and forge friendships with other countries. Worked for Europe. Do they so desperately need external threats to keep people united or what

Europe had to tear itself apart 3 times before it figured out that sharing is caring. Russia has always been a police state where 90% of the population were slaves to the state or wealthy so in truth the communist uprising was just a continuation of older policies just like how China has always been commie curious but never went full kink. Old habits die hard especially so for countries.

When will Kissinger just up and fucking die already