Kissinger: ‘Breaking Russia Has Become
Objective For US’
By RT
August 24, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- "RT"
- Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has hit out at
American and European Ukraine policy, saying it ignores Russia’s
relationship with its neighbor, and has called for cooperation
between the White House and the Kremlin on the issue.
“Breaking Russia has become an objective [for US officials]
the long-range purpose should be to integrate it,” the
92-year-old told The National Interest in a lengthy interview
for the policy magazine’s anniversary that touched on most of
the world’s most pertinent international issues.
“If we
treat Russia seriously as a great power, we need at an early
stage to determine whether their concerns can be reconciled with
our necessities.”The diplomat, who is most famous for
serving in the Nixon administration, and controversially being
awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, for negotiating the Vietnam
ceasefire, accused the West of failing to recognize the
historical context in which the fallout occurred between Moscow
and Kiev.
“The relationship between Ukraine and Russia will always
have a special character in the Russian mind. It can never be
limited to a relationship of two traditional sovereign states,
not from the Russian point of view, maybe not even from
Ukraine’s. So, what happens in Ukraine cannot be put into a
simple formula of applying principles that worked in Western
Europe.”
Kissinger lays the blame for sparking the conflict at the
door of the EU, which proposed a trade deal in 2013, without
considering how it would alienate Moscow, and divide the
Ukrainian people.
“The first mistake was the inadvertent conduct of the
European Union. They did not understand the implications of some
of their own conditions. Ukrainian domestic politics made it
look impossible for [former Ukrainian president Viktor]
Yanukovych to accept the EU terms and be reelected or for Russia
to view them as purely economic,” said Kissinger.
Once Yanukovich rejected the deal in November 2013, the EU
“panicked”, Russia became “overconfident,” the US
remained “passive” as “each side acted sort of
rationally based on its misconception of the other” and
“no
significant political discussions.”
For Kissinger, the wheels of the stand-off between Moscow and the
West were already set in motion during the subsequent Maidan street
protests – heartily endorsed by the West – which demanded the
toppling of the pro-Russian Yanukovich, an aim that was eventually
achieved.
“While Ukraine slid into the Maidan uprising right in the
middle of what Putin had spent ten years building as a recognition
of Russia’s status. No doubt in Moscow this looked as if the West
was exploiting what had been conceived as a Russian festival to move
Ukraine out of the Russian orbit.”
With the armed conflict in Ukraine still showing no signs of
resolution, Kissinger repeated his previous proposal for Ukraine to
become a buffer, or mediator state between Russia and the West.
“We should explore the possibilities of a status of
nonmilitary grouping on the territory between Russia and the
existing frontiers of NATO,” he told The National Interest.
“The West hesitates to take on the economic recovery of Greece; it’s
surely not going to take on Ukraine as a unilateral project. So one
should at least examine the possibility of some cooperation between
the West and Russia in a militarily nonaligned Ukraine.”
While Kissinger insists that he believes that Ukraine’s
territorial integrity, including Crimea, which joined Russia last
year, should have remained unaffected, he called for the West to
stop backing Kiev at all costs, even as the victims of the conflict
pile up.
“The Ukraine crisis is turning into a tragedy because it is
confusing the long-range interests of global order with the
immediate need of restoring Ukrainian identity,” summed up the
veteran diplomat.
The US military has launched the largest NATO
airborne drills in Europe since the end of the Cold War, to enhance
“security and stability” in the region. The war games, closely
watched by the Russian military, are an attempt to raise tensions in
the wake of alleged “Russian aggression,” Moscow believes.
Yale PhD & Anti-war activist Michael Parenti, joins RT
