Dust Off That Dirty Word Detente and Engage With China | Niall Ferguson Opinion Piece via Bloomberg

Historian and author Niall Ferguson continues to be a feature in many posts on this blog - here's one more for your interest

Opinion

Niall Ferguson

Dust Off That Dirty Word Detente and Engage With China

Joe Biden's grand strategy is setting the US and Beijing on a collision course. It's bad foreign policy and terrible domestic politics

ByNiall Ferguson

June 5, 2022, 12:00 PM UTC

"Is détente still a dirty word? I hope not. We may soon need it.

Back in the 1970s, that little French duosyllable was almost synonymous with “Kissinger.” Despite turning 99 last month, the former secretary of state has not lost his ability to infuriate people on both the right and the left — witness the reaction to his suggestion at the World Economic Forum that “the dividing line [between Russia and Ukraine] should return to the status quo ante” because “pursuing the war beyond that point could turn it into a war not about the freedom of Ukraine … but into a war against Russia itself.”

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May 25, 2022

Dr Henry Kissinger full speech at Davos' 22 World economic forum

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43 minutes ago · Dr Henry Kissinger full speech at Davos' 22 World economic forum. 1 view May 28, 2022 … ...more ...more. Show less.

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Kissinger: These are the main geopolitical challenges facing the world right now........

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22 July 2021

STREAMING: Henry Kissinger: How Biden should handle China | The Economist

The uploaded video can be viewed farther down. For your interest ahead of time, here are interesting reads from earlier posts on this blog via Niall Ferguson:

You cannot understand the world today without understanding how it has changed as a result of new information technology. This has become a truism. The question is, how has it changed? The answer is that technology has enormously empowered networks of all kinds relative to traditional hierarchical power structures.
The reality is that the global network has become a dangerously unstable structure. Far from promoting equality, the network does the opposite, by allowing hyperconnected “superhubs” to emerge.

Far from spreading truth and love, the network excels at disseminating lies and hate, because those are the things we nasty, fallen human beings like to click on. If Zuckerberg seriously intends to turn Facebook into the vanguard of liberal world government, then he is on a fast track to joining George Soros at the top of Steve Bannon’s Most Hated list.

Niall Ferguson’s new book, “The Square and the Tower: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Networks,’’ will be published early next year.

 

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29 May 2022

INTERNATIONAL REALISM: World Economic Forum Davos 2022

Intro: In fact, Kissinger was speaking like the adherent, which he has always been, of “international realism”—the school of thought that values stability above all else and, in that spirit, touts the interests of great powers and their spheres of interest over the ambitions (however lofty) of less mighty countries.

A different quotation: "Mr. Kissinger, a high priest of realpolitik, is no stranger to controversy. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Vietnam, critics complained, pointing to the devastating U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia during his tenure. Two members of the Nobel committee resigned in protest."

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When Henry Kissinger gives advice on ending the Ukraine conflict, the West should listen

The realpolitik veteran schools today’s ideologues, but they won’t like the lesson