Military conflict between Taiwan and China is likely if tensions continue on their current course, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said, although he still holds out for dialogue that will lead to de-escalation.
“On the current trajectory of relations, I think some military conflict is probable, but I also think the current trajectory of relations must be altered,” Kissinger said in an interview with Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwait when asked about the possibility that China would invade Taiwan.
The remarks, delivered as Kissinger looked back on his life and career soon after his 100th birthday, were some of his most downbeat about the state of relations between China and the US, which has vowed to back Taiwan in the event China attacks.
Photo: AP
Kissinger said it was up to Washington and Beijing to step back from their standoff, which he said was at “the top of a precipice.”
Kissinger, who served as the US’ top diplomat and national security adviser in the 1970s, spoke days before his latest successor, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is set to travel to Beijing.
Blinken would be the highest-level US official to visit China in five years and the White House is looking to set expectations low, saying there would be no breakthroughs.
Kissinger, the author of numerous books including On China, written a year before Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) took power, is closely watched for his views on Asian geopolitics given his secret trip to China in 1972 and his role in normalizing US-China relations under then-US president Richard Nixon.
Kissinger said he is still undecided about the outcome of the strains between the US and China, given that “they have not yet actually engaged in the sort of dialogs that I’ve suggested.”
However, the one thing he said he knows for sure is that wars between two superpowers cannot be won.
Or they are “winnable only at costs that are out of proportion,” he said.
“It’s a unique situation in the sense that the biggest threat of each country is the other — that is, the biggest threat to China is America, in their perception, and the same is true here,” he said.
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