condominium, with China increasingly the dominant “partner.”īut such a relationship, which essentially means carrying the recent engagement compulsion to its logical conclusion, inevitably would conflict with Kissinger’s subsidiary admonition to “safeguard the principles of the liberal world order. officials not to neglect “the urgent task of launching a parallel enterprise for the transition to the post-coronavirus order.” Based on his previous writings and his 50 years of activities since Richard Nixon enlisted him to help with the opening to China, it is likely that the new world order he envisions is some form of China-U.S.

Nor does the regime’s disinformation campaign to deflect blame to the United States merit his attention. The Trump administration’s ability to “arrest and then reverse” the spread of the virus will determine the prospects for “public confidence in Americans’ ability to govern themselves.” As for the Chinese people’s trust in the communist authorities ruling them, he is silent about the signs of further erosion. administration has done a solid job in avoiding an immediate catastrophe.”īut, depending on the pandemic’s outcome, Kissinger sees the consequences for the United States as almost existential.

shortcomings that span several administrations: insufficient medical supplies, overwhelmed intensive care units, inadequate testing resources, no cure, no vaccine. He is not reluctant, however, to identify U.S. “To argue now about the past only makes it harder to do what has to be done,” he writes. But, for Kissinger’s purposes in this essay, that is not a matter worth considering. The direct cause of China’s epidemic exploding into a global pandemic was the flagrant refusal of the communist authorities to control it immediately or to allow international experts in to investigate. It is unclear whether he had it in mind when he predicted the pandemic’s aftermath: “Many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed.” Yet, in the 828 words of his Wall Street Journal article, “ The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order,” Kissinger never mentions China. presidents and, simultaneously, to five supreme leaders of Communist China. It is a revolutionary transition that he played a major, if not dominant, part in arranging as an adviser to eight U.S. He sees the changes as having laid the groundwork for a massive shift in world influence from the United States and the West to the People’s Republic of China. In his two recent books, “ On China” and “ World Order,” Kissinger describes the geopolitical dynamics of the past half-century. America’s oracle of realpolitik, Henry Kissinger, seeks to put the coronavirus pandemic in the context of his ongoing narrative of the changing world order.

Kissinger henry world order