Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the man who received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire in the Vietnam War, warns the United States and China now find themselves on the brink of a war neither wants, but neither seems incapable of preventing.
Kissinger said both powers find themselves in a situation eerily similar to the one that existed between the Western Allies and the German Empire before blundered into World War I in August 1914. U.S.-China relations are now at their lowest point in decades due mostly to former president Donald Trump's incessant demonizing of China.
Kissinger said the Biden administration should move quickly to restore lines of communication with China Trump sabotaged or risk a crisis that might escalate into a war.
"Unless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I," said Kissinger during the opening session of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.
"America and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they're conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way," said Kissinger.
"The danger is that some crisis will occur that will go beyond rhetoric into actual military conflict," an obvious reference to the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian zealot that ignited World War I. This murder forced the Western Allies (including Russia) and the German Empire to mobilize their massive military forces, an action that made World War I inevitable.
Kissinger, 97, said today's military technologies available would make a U.S.-China war "even more difficult to control" than the wars of the 20th century.
He expressed alarm at the rapid erosion in diplomatic ties this year, which means China and the U.S. are blundering toward a new Cold War. Kissinger said both countries should "agree that whatever other conflict they have, they will not resort to military conflict."
To attain this aim, the U.S. and China should jointly create "an institutional system by which some leader that our president trusts and some Chinese leader that President Xi trusts are designated to remain in contact with each other on behalf of their presidents," according to Kissinger.
He believes democracies should cooperate wherever their convictions allow it or dictate it. He has second thoughts about Biden's plan to build a coalition of democracies to counter China.
"I think a coalition aimed at a particular country is unwise, but a coalition to prevent dangers is necessary where the occasion requires."
He said the ultimate question facing the U.S. is whether its Western allies can come to an understanding with China about a new global order.
"If we don't get to that point and if we don't get to an understanding with China on that point, then we will be in a pre-World War One-type situation in Europe, in which there are perennial conflicts that get solved on an immediate basis, but one of them gets out of control at some point," he said.
"It is infinitely more dangerous now than it was then (before World War I)," said Kissinger.
