Kissinger: Time for negotiated peace in Ukraine to avoid another world war

By Mallika Soni

The time is approaching for negotiated peace in Ukraine to reduce the risk of another devastating world war, veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger said adding that dreams of breaking up Russia could unleash nuclear chaos.

Henry Kissinger, an architect of the Cold War policy towards the Soviet Union as secretary of state under Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has met Vladimir Putin multiple times since he first became president in 2000.

“The time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished and to integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation,” Henry Kissinger wrote in The Spectator magazine.

“A peace process should link Ukraine to NATO, however expressed. The alternative of neutrality is no longer meaningful,” Henry Kissinger wrote in the article titled “How to avoid another world war”.

Henry Kissinger said he had in May proposed a ceasefire under which Russia would withdraw to the front lines before the February invasion but Crimea would be the subject of “negotiation”.

Henry Kissinger also suggested that if it proved impossible to return to the status quo established in 2014, internationally supervised referendums in territory claimed by Russia could be an option, warning that desires to render Russia “impotent”, or even seek the dissolution of Russia, could unleash chaos.

“The dissolution of Russia or destroying its ability for strategic policy could turn its territory encompassing 11 time zones into a contested vacuum,” Henry Kissinger said.

“Its competing societies might decide to settle their disputes by violence. Other countries might seek to expand their claims by force. All these dangers would be compounded by the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons which make Russia one of the world’s two largest nuclear powers,” he wrote.

Hindustan Times