“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington’s attempts to join Ukraine to NATO were not wise,” said former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Friday, September 30.
Speaking at the invitation of the US Council on Foreign Relations, the 99-year-old diplomat noted that Washington tried to indiscriminately bring all former members of the Soviet bloc under its umbrella after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that “the entire region between the center of Europe and the borders of Russia was open to restructuring.”
“From the Russian point of view, the US then tried to integrate this entire region, without exception, into an American-led strategic system,” he said, adding that this development largely eliminated Russia’s historic “security zone.”
H. Kissinger thus emphasized that “the attempt to include Ukraine in NATO was not a wise policy on the part of America”.
Kissinger said he did not know whether it was possible to make peace with the Russian leader, but stressed that the West “must look for an opportunity for an agreement that guarantees Ukraine’s freedom” and keeps the country part of the European system.
Despite this, the former secretary of state announced that sooner or later the West and Russia should have a dialogue. “Some kind of dialogue, perhaps at an informal or intelligence level, is very important,” he repeated, adding that such an outcome in a “nuclear environment” is preferable to a “battlefield decision.”
As can be understood, the West is also multi-layered, and the American scientific elite is also multi-layered. H. Kissinger has been one of the main developers of the American foreign policy line for years, and now quite often voices the thesis that the US foreign policy of the past and the present one are quite different from each other. In particular, flexibility is lacking, giving way to a drive for endless confrontation.
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