"We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it is supposed to lead to," Kissinger told the Wall Street Journal.
The veteran foreign policy scholar said that the Unuted States can only avoid accelerating tensions and "create options."
As for Ukraine, Kissinger thought that in the past it was best fit to act as a buffer between Russia and the West, "something like Finland." However, Russia's military operation in Ukraine changed his view, making him believe that "one way or the other, formally or not, Ukraine has to be treated in the aftermath of this as a member of NATO." The former secretary of state also argued that Russia would retain Crimea and parts of Donbass as a result of a plausible settlement with Kiev.
During the World Economic Forum in May, Kissinger called for a diplomatic settlement in Ukraine to restore the status quo ante bellum, i.e. the situation as it was before Russia launched its special operation on February 24.
Last month, Kissinger, the man who helped reestablish US-China ties in the 1970s, warned President Joe Biden against "endless confrontations" with Beijing.
“Biden and previous administrations have been too much influenced by the domestic aspects of the view of China,” Kissinger told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “It is, of course, important to prevent Chinese or any other country’s hegemony.”
The 99-year-old diplomat said that geopolitics today requires "Nixonian flexibility" to help ease tensions between Washington and Beijing.