Kissinger, a longtime Putin confidant, sidles up to Trump
America's pre-eminent ex-diplomat gets back in the mix. Could he help broker a deal with Russia?
12/24/16 07:26 AM EST
Henry Kissinger has been promoting himself as a potential intermediary between a Trump White House and Russia. | AP Photo
Back
in the 1990s, Henry Kissinger, the legendary former U.S. secretary of
state-turned-global consultant, encountered an intriguing young Russian
and proceeded to ask him a litany of questions about his background.
“I
worked in intelligence,” Vladimir Putin finally told him, according to
“First Person,” a 2000 autobiography cobbled together from hours of
interviews with the then-unfamiliar Russian leader. To which Kissinger
replied: “All decent people got their start in intelligence. I did,
too.”
As
Putin climbed the ranks in the Kremlin, eventually becoming the
autocratic president he is today, he and Kissinger kept up a warm
rapport even as the United States and Russia grew further apart.
Kissinger is one of the few Americans to meet frequently with Putin, one
former U.S. ambassador recently recalled -- along with movie star Steven Seagal and ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, the likely next secretary of state.
Now,
as Donald Trump signals that he wants a more cooperative relationship
with Moscow, the 93-year-old Kissinger is positioning himself as a
potential intermediary — meeting with the president-elect in private and
flattering him in public. Like Trump, Kissinger has also cast doubt on
intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia sought to sway the
election in Trump's favor, telling a recent interviewer: “They were hacking, but the use they allegedly made of this hacking eludes me.”
Some
have expressed surprise that the urbane, cerebral former top diplomat
would have any affinity for the brash, shoot-from-the-lip Trump. But
seasoned Kissinger watchers say it’s vintage behavior for a foreign
policy realist who has cozied up to all sorts of kings and presidents
for decades. And in fact, Trump may wind up an ideal vessel for
Kissinger -- the architect of detente with the Soviets in the 1970s --
to realize his longstanding goal of warmer ties between the two Cold War
adversaries.
For
years, Kissinger has argued that promoting a greater balance of power
between the U.S. and Russia would improve global stability. But skeptics
fear this approach will sacrifice other values and reward bad behavior
by the Kremlin, including its alleged election meddling, its invasion of
Ukraine and its support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. There’s also
the question of how Kissinger himself would personally benefit from a
new reset with Russia: Aside from the reputational boost of having easy
access to two major world leaders, the former secretary of state's
secretive consulting firm, Kissinger Associates Inc., could get a bump
in business.
“I
think Kissinger is preparing a diplomatic offensive,” said Marcel H.
Van Herpen, a Russia specialist and Putin critic who directs the Cicero
Foundation, a Dutch think tank. “He’s a realist. The most important
thing for him is international equilibrium, and there’s no talk of human
rights or democracy.”
Trump
aides did not offer a comment on the president-elect’s relationship
with Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and national security
adviser in the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. But
sources familiar with the transition effort say the Manhattan real
estate mogul is fascinated by Kissinger as well as other Republican
elder statesmen, such as Robert Gates and Condoleezza Rice, to whom he
has turned for advice on policy and staffing.
Kissinger
and Trump have chatted on multiple occasions, including during at least
one face-to-face meeting since the Nov. 8 election. And Kissinger, to
the surprise of many in the broader foreign policy establishment, has
spoken admiringly — albeit carefully — about the Trump phenomenon. Even
after Trump spoke directly with the president of Taiwan -- a move that
angered Beijing and went against the One China policy that Kissinger
negotiated in the 1970s -- the former secretary of state expressed confidence Trump would uphold U.S. diplomatic traditions with the Chinese.
Associates
of Kissinger also are in touch with others in the Trump orbit. One top
Kissinger aide, Thomas Graham, is being floated among lower-level
transition interlocutors as a potential ambassador to Russia, according
to a source familiar with the conversations.
Graham
met with House Foreign Affairs Committee staffers on Capitol Hill
earlier this month, accompanied by other Russia observers, according to
four people familiar with the session. Graham also sought meetings in
the Senate. Graham appeared to be trying to identify people who shared
similar outlooks on Russia and had connections to the Trump transition,
three of the people said.
By POLITICO STAFF
Kissinger also has praised Trump's choice of Tillerson as the next secretary of state, dismissing worries
that the ExxonMobil chief is too close to the Kremlin. “He would be
useless at the head of Exxon if he was not friendly with Russia… I don’t
hear those concerns at all," Kissinger said at an event in Manhattan.
"Nobody can meet every single qualification for secretary of state. I
think it’s a good appointment.”
Kissinger Associates doesn’t disclose its clients under U.S. lobbying laws. The firm once threatened to sue Congress to resist a subpoena for its client list. It hasin the past advised
American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola and Daewoo. But the firm
does belong to the U.S.-Russia Business Council, a trade group that
includes ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase and Pfizer.
A
person familiar with the Trump team's national security planning warned
against reading too much into the Trump-Kissinger relationship. The
president-elect, the person said, "admires the reputation and the
gravitas but isn't necessarily persuaded by the Kissingerian
worldview."
That
may be true when it comes to China, a frequent subject of Trump’s ire,
and the need to maintain a strong NATO, whose usefulness Trump has
repeatedly questioned. But Trump's desire for warmer ties with Russia
has been one of the more consistent stances he's taken, and he could
find alignment with Kissinger.
POLITICO's
attempts to reach Kissinger did not succeed this past week. But despite
his unsavory reputation among human rights advocates -- who recite a
litany of moral offenses from Vietnam to Bangladesh -- presidents of
both political parties have sought Kissinger's advice for the past 40
years, and he's been eager to oblige.
During
the final years of the George W. Bush administration, as relations with
Moscow were souring, Kissinger teamed up with Evgeny Primakov, the
former Russian prime minister and head of the Russian Chamber of
Commerce and Industry, to co-chair a working group focused on bilateral
relations between the U.S. and Russia. Putin blessed the venture.
According to Kissinger, Bush, too, hoped the initiative would yield
positive results, even assembling members of his national security team
to learn about its work in 2008. But the payoff was modest, at best:
Russia sent troops into the former Soviet state of Georgia in August
2008, angering the Bush administration, which imposed limited sanctions.
When Barack Obama took over the presidency from Bush, he sought Kissinger’s help on how to deal with Putin. A 2009 meeting between
Kissinger and Putin helped lay the groundwork for a new arms-control
pact as part of Obama’s effort to “reset” Russian relations. Kissinger
remained involved in arms negotiations through 2010, according to
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails released by
the State Department. But ultimately that reset failed as well, for
reasons that include Putin's frustrations over U.S. support of NATO and
European Union expansion, which he believed threatened Russian influence
in countries such as Ukraine.
In a February speech honoring
Primakov, who died last year, Kissinger sketched out his view of the
way U.S.-Russian relations should work. "The long-term interests of both
countries call for a world that transforms the contemporary turbulence
and flux into a new equilibrium which is increasingly multi-polar and
globalized," he said. "Russia should be perceived as an essential
element of any new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the
United States.”
President Richard Nixon talks with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about the Middle East crisis in 1973.
As
for Ukraine, which lost its Crimea region to Russian annexation in 2014
and is still fighting Russian-backed separatists in its east, Kissinger
argued that it shouldn’t be invited to join the West outright. "Ukraine
needs to be embedded in the structure of European and international
security architecture in such a way that it serves as a bridge between
Russia and the West, rather than as an outpost of either side," he said.
In
Syria, he likewise called for the U.S. to cooperate with Russia, which
has used indiscriminate air power to help Assad crush rebel forces.
"Compatible U.S.-Russian efforts coordinated with other major powers
could create a pattern for peaceful solutions in the Middle East and
perhaps elsewhere,” he advised at the time.
Steven
Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, noted that it's not yet
clear how far Trump will go to accommodate Russia. The president-elect’s
pick for defense secretary is James Mattis, a retired Marine general
who views Moscow as a major threat. And Trump, who prides himself on his
deal-making skills, may ultimately conclude that Russia has little to
offer.
“Does
Trump get to a better relationship with Russia without getting
something for it in terms of better behavior?" Pifer asked. "If we’re
prepared to accept what they’re doing in Syria, Crimea, and Eastern
Ukraine, we can have a better relationship, but we’ve sacrificed other
interests and it’s not clear what we get for that.”
In an interview with
CBS News that aired earlier this month, Kissinger spoke of both Trump
and Putin in terms that suggested a sense of respect, if not necessarily
awe.
Trump,
Kissinger said, "has the possibility of going down in history as a very
considerable president.” Because of perceptions that Obama weakened
America's influence abroad, "one could imagine that something remarkable
and new emerges” out of a Trump administration," he said. "I’m not
saying it will. I’m saying it’s an extraordinary opportunity.”
Putin,
meanwhile, is a "character out of Dostoyevsky,” Kissinger said, a
reference to the 19th-century author who chronicled the often bleak
lives of Russians in novels such as "Crime and Punishment" and "The
Idiot." “He is a man with a great sense of connection, an inward
connection, to Russian history as he sees it,” Kissinger said of Putin.
The
Kremlin took it as a compliment. “Kissinger knows our country really
well, he knows our writers and our philosophers so such comparisons from
him are quite positive,” a spokesman for the Russian government said,
adding that Kissinger "has deep knowledge, not superficial.”
No comments:
Post a Comment