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2022-03-18 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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Flashback: Kissinger's 2014 Washington Post op-ed predicted current mess, offered a wise solution
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[FoxNews] Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger essentially predicted the current situation that led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a chilling op-ed published eight years ago.
Kissinger penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on March 5, 2014 headlined, "To settle the Ukraine crisis, start at the end," which detailed much of what has unfolded as Russia’s attack continues.
"Public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know where we are going? In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins," Kissinger wrote.
"Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them," he continued. "Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move Russia’s borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the United States."
The eight-year-old piece detailed why many Russians historically feel that Ukraine would never be seen as an independent country.
"The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Polyvana in 1709, we fought on Ukrainian soil," Kissinger who was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, continued.
Kissinger explained why priorities needed to be established in order for Ukraine to thrive.
"Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia," he wrote. "The European Union must recognize that its bureaucratic dilatoriness and subordination of the strategic element to domestic politics in negotiating Ukraine’s relationship to Europe contributed to turning a negotiation into a crisis. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities."
Kissinger called Ukrainians "the decisive element" because they live in a country with a deep history and a "polyglot composition," noting the Western part of the nation was "incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939, when Stalin and Hitler divided up the spoils" but the largely Russian section of Crimea didn’t become part of Ukraine until 1954.
"The west is largely Catholic; the east largely Russian Orthodox. The west speaks Ukrainian; the east speaks mostly Russian. Any attempt by one wing of Ukraine to dominate the other — as has been the pattern — would lead eventually to civil war or break up. To treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West — especially Russia and Europe — into a cooperative international system," Kissinger wrote. 
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Posted by Jomoting Thrart9060 2022-03-18 00:00||
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