Posted on 04/07/2020 4:23:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
Among the works that first brought Henry Kissinger to academic acclaim was "A World Restored," his 1950s book about how the greatest diplomats of Europe met at the Congress of Vienna to restore order to a continent shattered by the Napoleonic Wars.
The balance-of-power peace these men achieved lasted -- with the significant exception of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 -- for the full century, from 1815 to 1914.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal Friday, Kissinger declared that it is now an imperative that the world's leaders, even as they deal with the raging pandemic, begin to make the "transition to the post-coronavirus order."
"Failure to do so could set the world on fire."
Yet, the ingredients Kissinger considers essential for establishing that new world order appear, like ventilators, to be in short supply.
"Sustaining public trust," asserts Kissinger, "is crucial ... to international peace and stability."
But how do we trust again our adversary China, after its criminal cover-up of the menace and magnitude of the virus unleashed in Wuhan?
How do we trust again this regime that was, until recently, blaming the coronavirus on U.S. Army troops visiting Wuhan?
Observing governments thrashing about in the crisis, the phrase that comes to mind is not "public trust" as much as "every nation for itself."
On Monday, The Wall Street Journal described Europe's recent behavior thus:
"EU countries unilaterally shut borders and hoarded vital medical gear, leaving people stranded far from home, grocery stores struggling to stock shelves and hospitals desperate to save critically ill patients.
"When Italy and Spain, reeling from some of the world's most deadly outbreaks, urged their richer and healthier Northern neighbors to help, Dutch politicians brushed off the appeals as new signs of southerners' mismanagement."
Last week, the EU's Court of Justice ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke EU law by refusing to relocate refugees during the migrant crisis in 2015. The three nations offered no apologies.
Last month, Greece used force to stop Syrian refugees from entering its territory. According to Human Rights Watch, Greek troops and armed men at the Greece-Turkey land border sexually assaulted, robbed and stripped asylum seekers and migrants, driving them back into Turkey. The EU has stayed largely silent.
When Donald Trump's issued his Jan. 31 travel ban on those who had recently been in China, candidate Joe Biden denounced Trump for "hysterical xenophobia and fear-mongering."
Biden now thinks Trump did the right thing.
Even lifetime liberals can put ideology on the shelf when the voice of the people is loud and clear enough.
We must "struggle to heal the wounds to the world economy," said Kissinger.
Yet, the crisis has revealed that a prominent feature of this global economy is that China controls the production of medicines essential to keeping Americans alive. Do we want to continue that dependency?
Says Kissinger: "The world's democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values... (and) safeguard the principles of the liberal world order."
But did not March 2020 prove the superior wisdom of Alexander Hamilton: "Every nation ought to endeavour to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply."
Today, borders are everywhere being strengthened as nations compete ferociously for N95 masks and ventilators. Authoritarian rulers are seizing broader powers. The claims of family, faith, tribe, nation and country seem ascendant over all.
"The founding legend of modern government," writes Kissinger, "is a walled city ... strong enough to protect the people from an external enemy. ... This pandemic has produced ... a revival of the walled city in an age where prosperity depends on global trade and movement of people."
Kissinger calls the concept of the walled city an "anachronism," a "legend."
ut is the idea of the nation-state, whose principal duty is the defense of the health, safety and security of the unique people who created it, the "legend"?
Or is the real legend, the myth, the idea of some New World Order of countries traveling and trading happily with one another in a federation of the world?
In this coronavirus crisis, we can see clearly now, no longer as through a glass darkly.
As in most wars, it is to the men of action not the men of words to whom the people turn -- to governors, not legislators or members of Congress, who are taking action, as states outbid one another for critical medical equipment.
As for Donald Trump, suddenly, the elites are berating him for being insufficiently dictatorial.
Trump, they rail, did not move swiftly enough to invoke the Defense Production Act. He failed to use its authority to dictate to U.S. companies what they must produce. He did not shut down the country quickly enough. He failed to issue orders soon enough to governors who delayed shutting down their states.
People are dying, it is now said, because Trump did not immediately become the autocrat that progressives were denouncing him for being during the impeachment hearings two months ago.
I only wonder if Nixon knew where the USA and the world was headed thanks to Dr.Kissinger's influencing the Detente with the evil rulers of communist China. Perhaps we should name the Chinese disease, Kissinger Virus!
Kissinger is an enemy of America and spends his twilight years in unbelievable luxury!
Yep
You’re a relic of the 20th. Century, Hank. You should remain there.
FOAD Kissinger, yes, but it’s obvious this polemic was not written by a 96 year old man.
Who and why are important questions for understanding our world.
Kissinger sold us out in Vietnam to the Chinese so that Nixon could have his picture taken with Mao.
He caved to the Communists at every turn.
I have no idea what they are doing about the corona virus, if anything. I get my news from FR, and if someone here thought the UN might have said or done something news-worthy, I'd have read about it here.
Nothing
Nada
Zip...
Someone was a bit weak on history.
Even assuming a limit to the tiny confines of Continental Europe there were the Austro-Prussian war, the French invasion of Spain, the Italian and Greek wars for independence; various wars between the Ottomans and the Russians, Serbians, and various others; and, of course, the big one - the Crimean War between England and Russia.
The fixable problem is China. China's economic progress over the last 40 years has been extraordinary. This is generally a good thing. I do not wish poverty on anyone. The problem is that China has to come to terms constructively with the fact that it is now a world power. It is too big and too wealthy to be playing stupid beggar-thy-neighbor mercantilist games. It is too big to be a chronic cheater. It was one thing to cut China some slack when it was a desperately poor country playing catchup. Those days are past. China has to start playing by the rules.
Just a few years ago, people were optimistic that China was headed in the right direction. Political liberalization was (and still is) the key. A democratic, or at least less authoritarian, rule-abiding, prosperous China means 1.3 billion good customers for us, Japan, the EU and other trading nations. Unfortunately, the party hardliners have clearly engineered a comeback. China is regressing in the interests of maintaining the control of a kleptocratic criminal political class. This regime regards the rest of the world as enemies, because that is the basic conceptual framework of essentially criminal totalitarian thugs who cannot tolerate freedom of speech, expression and political choice. This is a tragedy for China and, if things get ugly, for the rest of us as well.
The more difficult and perhaps insoluble problem is the failure of the global south, where people have now discovered that the easy answer to their problems is to immigrate to the U.S. and Europe. Mass immigration from failed states will destroy the West. And there is a powerful fifth column in every western democracy dedicated to the destruction of the free societies. It will take more than a wall to stop this.
I was fighting in the jungles of Viet Nam when this disastrous asshat clown was being acclaimed as a genius and a great statesman but I'm here to say that he is far from a genius but more of a slithering snake in the tall grass for freedom lovers everywhere. He did much damage to America IMO when was seated next to the power in the WH. He should be shunned.
I can think of a few other wars in that period. They sparked the first great migration out of Europe to the US.
Would not be surprised that he takes whole blood transfusions from virginal boys and lives to be 120.
fallen human nature + nature of government + laws of systemantics = disaster for natural rights and liberty
That old Soros bootlicker is still around?
.
China removed as a threat to Wall St. banker global debt farming, Trump’s momentum towards reelection thrown into turmoil, attention taken off the many DOJ investigations into the Mueller/impeachment fiascoes, Democratic Party USA on life support, global economy shut down. Cui bono, eh, Henry? You and your fascist butt buddies put that virus in Wuhan. When you are losing, kick the chessboard over, eh, Henry. We’ll just see how your little police state run up falls out, you swine.
I think you are spot on, Sphinx, regarding China. I would add that China is in the full throes of a demographic catastrophe. And they know it. The greater risk facing the world going forward is not an ascendant China but rather an imploding and thus reckless China.
On the global south you are too quick to judge this a failure. Africa in particular has made astonishing progress in two decades. The starting point was at depths that are hard even to fathom, but there is much to be hopeful for in the majority of countries.
hell no u illumanti go to hell
Didn’t think he was still living! I guess he is BRAIN DEAD. Another RINO Globalist!!
Kissinger is the Chi Com’s whore.
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