By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
June 9th, 2022
Three months after the launching of what amounts to a sui generis world war against Russia (*), two important interventions, asking for de-escalation and some kind of peace with Moscow, came from Henry Kissinger, speaking to the Davos meeting of and from the New York Times. It seems, like Henderlin noticed, that where evil grows, also grows the medicine that can cure it.
It is truly astonishing and deeply ironic to see today one of the most criminal figures of American imperialism in the past and of international policy during the whole twentieth century, Henry Kissinger himself, intervene in the gathering of western capitalist elites to tell them to make peace with Russia before it is too late, and even to do so by accepting to modify the currently internationally recognized Ukrainian borders (**). In other words, to accept that it is just impossible to reverse Russia’s gains on the ground.
If anyone else had said much less than what Kissinger said, with the climate of neo-McCarthyism prevailing now in the West, the mainstream media would have portrayed him as a paid agent of the KGB! But this is a little bit difficult to do with the former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser of the United States, who is considered the guru of American diplomacy and Western strategy, invited to Davos by the president of the Forum, Klaus Schwab himself.
What is the explanation of the irony? Kissinger remains of course an imperialist himself. But he has grown up in an era much more rationale than our times. The fact he is now becoming a sort of “dissident” reflects the fact the international system – and in particular the western, capitalist – imperialist system – has moved far away from rationalism and any point of equilibrium. That is representing in itself a huge danger for the whole world. (Strategically speaking we must always remember we are living, after 1945, in a world where it is impossible for anybody to win a world war, because of the productive forces and technologies we developed. But nobody seems to accept it, to grasp the real significance of this new situation, observed for the first time in human history and act accordingly).
If the war does not stop in two or three months, there will be such turmoil that it will hardly possible to fix things anymore, Kissinger warned.
New York Times against New York Times: The cost of illusions
Kissinger’s intervention cannot be considered accidental. And it was not the only one. The New York Times, an independent major center of power in the US and a newspaper that starred for three months in the anti-Russian pro-war hysteria of the West, abruptly changed its stance a few days ago. It published an editorial under the headline “the war in Ukraine is complicated and America is not ready.” The article is expressing concern about the “enormous costs and grave dangers of the war” and emphasizes that there are many questions that President Biden has not yet answered to the American people about the continued involvement of the United States.
It is not in America’s interest to go to a full-blown war with Russia, “even if a negotiated peace may require some tough decisions from Ukraine”, i.e. to make the painful territorial decisions that any compromise solution will require.
“Mr. Biden must also make clear to President Volodymyr Zelensky that there is a limit to how far the United States and NATO will go in the confrontation with Russia, and a limit to the weapons, money and political support they can provide. It is imperative that the Ukrainian government’s decisions be based on a realistic assessment of its means and how much more destruction Ukraine can endure.”
To the above two interventions, which are very important because they come out of the very center of the world establishment, we can add also various other voices like President Macron, speaking of the need not to try to humiliate Russia, the Greek ex-PM Karamanlis, who called Europe to take an initiative for peace, the ex-President of the German SPD and of the German Linke Party Oscar Lafontaine, who accused the US of not being interested to end the war or the near certain future and President of Brazil Lula who also had the courage to indicate, speaking to the Time, that Biden himself shares a part of responsibility for the war.
To the camp of the “doves”, if we must call them like that, one must also include the US armed forces, with General Milley insisting that “a negotiated outcome is a logical choice, but both sides have to come to that conclusion on their own.” Generals know what is war and they also understand the dangers associated with means of mass destruction. On the contrary, the crushing majority of present day western political personnel is very uneducated and very inexperienced, it has grown up in the particular atmosphere of “end of History” and eternal victory of Western capitalism and was propelled to the positions they hold by special “leaders creation laboratories” of the US and the EU or the international Financial Capital. They are extremely dangerous ignorants who could get mankind to a world war and annihilation because they don’t understand what they are doing and they are intellectually and morally disconnected from the real world (this is very evident from the top to the bottom of many international bureaucracies like those of NATO, EU, OECD, partly the UN etc.). The emergence of this personnel reflects also the enormous increase of entropy, the measure od disorder and of irrationalism in the world and in particular the western capitalist – imperialist system.
But the position of the US Armed Forces does not coincide with the powerful lobby of the US defense and fossil fuel industries, which make already fantastic profits out of the war and they plan to make much more, while cancelling any serious measures to stop the use of fossil fuels in order to reverse climate change (which is threatening life on Earth). It is not also the position of the various extremist forces operating in the center of the system and pushing towards all forms of war of all against all and of chaos
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