Henry Kissinger is Wrong About Preserving Russia Post War: Ex-U.S. General

A recent essay by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger expressing trepidation about an "impotent" Russia on a global scale continues to draw condemnation.

The essay, titled "How to Avoid Another World War" and published earlier this month in The Spectator, compares the current Russia-Ukraine conflict to World War I. Kissinger argues that Russia's "historical role should not be degraded" even with its "propensity for violence," adding that peace should be achieved through negotiation.

Kissinger's words drew a response from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said the former Cabinet member in the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations is looking at the wrong calendar and not taking Ukraine's interests into proper consideration.

On Wednesday, advisor, author and political science professor Julian Lindley-French issued a rebuke to Kissinger's essay—notably how Russia as it currently stands must be maintained for the "global equilibrium."

"What I do not understand is Kissinger's implication that we need to maintain THIS radically, revisionist, wrecker-ball Russia because if not the worsening disequilibrium in the international system will only get worse," Lindley-French wrote in a blog post. "That begs a question Kissinger fails to answer: how can an over-armed failing state the very ethos of which is the exploitation and undermining of the rules-based system be convinced to become a pillar of said system?"

While Kissinger related the current war to pre-1917 Europe, Lindley-French calls his comparison a "paradox," arguing that it "was the last time that Russia made any pretense to be a paragon of a rules-based order."

Kissinger called that war "cultural suicide" in his essay. Lindley-French said the consequences of said war "were more strategic and political than cultural."

And while Kissinger said former President Woodrow Wilson delayed peace talks that cost millions of lives in the process, Lindley-French said Wilson and his aides never really made a genuine attempt at all—comparing such alleged olive branches to recent ones made by Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov, referred to by the author as "the cynicism of the ploy."

"Serious negotiations over Ukraine can only begin when Russia acknowledges its errors and its failure and Moscow is convinced of both Western unity and power," Lindley-French said.

Lindley-French's post was praised by retired U.S. Army Commanding General Ben Hodges, who said Kissinger's assessment "got it mostly wrong."

"We must see Putin's Russia for what it is...and preserve the international rules-based order Russia wants to destroy," Hodges tweeted.

Kissinger is right to believe Russia will eventually come to its senses and that nobody should seek to "dismember" the nation, Lindley-French added, but that time hasn't arrived.

"Kissinger is simply wrong to believe that Putin's Russia or any Russia like it can ever be a partner in preserving global equilibrium when it is so determined to destroy it," Lindley-French said.

In May while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kissinger said that Ukraine should cede territory to Russia.