Secretary of State John Kerry will
host Nixon-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for a meeting
Wednesday, just one day before he is due to lock horns with the Russian
foreign minister over the Syria crisis.
Kissinger, best known as the 1970s diplomat who crafted the U.S.-Soviet détente and helped open China to the West, suggested during the summer that Syria should be broken up into separate nations for its varied religious and ethnic groups.
He has generally been supportive, however, of military strikes against the Bashar al-Assad regime, warning that doing nothing would be 'catastrophic.'
DC summit: Will Kissinger show Kerry a path forward, or will the younger diplomat insist on pointing the way?
Kissinger, best known as the 1970s diplomat who crafted the U.S.-Soviet détente and helped open China to the West, suggested during the summer that Syria should be broken up into separate nations for its varied religious and ethnic groups.
He has generally been supportive, however, of military strikes against the Bashar al-Assad regime, warning that doing nothing would be 'catastrophic.'
Cold warrior: The 90-year-old Kissinger, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is
best known for helping de-escalate tensions between the U.S. and the
Soviet Union
'It would be a demonstration that
after the president has publicly drawn a red line, he cannot get
congressional support for a policy that has been unchallenged with
respect to chemical weapons,' Kissinger told BBC Radio 4's Today program on Sept. 4.
The 90-year-old Cold War diplomat hasn't spoken publicly about the crisis in Syria since Russia outfoxed President Obama on Tuesday by crafting an escape valve for Assad that would blend a forfeit of his chemical weapons with a U.S. promise not to unleash military force.
As part of the peace deal Kerry is due to meet Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva.
Kissinger's meeting with Kerry will mark his first opportunity to privately weigh in on President Obama's performance during a 15-minute speech Tuesday night in which he tried to reconcile the need for a military threat with America's desire to avoid a new Middle Eastern war.
There's
nothing unusual about past and present top diplomats meeting. But it's
unclear how Kissinger will advise Kerry, whose gaffe Monday in London –
an offhand quip that Assad could avoid U.S. military intervention if he
gave up his chemical weapons in a week – cleared the way for Russian
President Vladimir Putin to seize the reins.
The State Department did not respond to a request for information about the nature of the Kerry-Kissinger summit, and Kissinger's office in New York would not immediately comment.
But a former diplomat who worked under Kissinger in the 1970s told MailOnline that he 'was probably called in to help Kerry figure out how to telegraph strength in Geneva without disrupting the entire Middle East.'
The 90-year-old Cold War diplomat hasn't spoken publicly about the crisis in Syria since Russia outfoxed President Obama on Tuesday by crafting an escape valve for Assad that would blend a forfeit of his chemical weapons with a U.S. promise not to unleash military force.
As part of the peace deal Kerry is due to meet Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva.
Kissinger's meeting with Kerry will mark his first opportunity to privately weigh in on President Obama's performance during a 15-minute speech Tuesday night in which he tried to reconcile the need for a military threat with America's desire to avoid a new Middle Eastern war.
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The State Department did not respond to a request for information about the nature of the Kerry-Kissinger summit, and Kissinger's office in New York would not immediately comment.
But a former diplomat who worked under Kissinger in the 1970s told MailOnline that he 'was probably called in to help Kerry figure out how to telegraph strength in Geneva without disrupting the entire Middle East.'
Nowhere to run: Anti-war protesters shouted at the car carrying Kerry
after he testified Tuesday in a House Armed Services Committee hearing
on Syria
Younger days: Then-Secretary of State Kissinger met with Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat, who was later murdered, during the Sinai II
negotiations in 1975.
On Monday Kissinger criticized President Obama on CNN,
saying he shouldn't have given Congress a role in deciding whether to
attack Syria after a chemical weapon attack there killed more than 1,400
people on August 21.
'I have been against American military intervention, and have said so publicly,' Kissinger told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. 'This, however, is a use of weapons of mass destruction, which has consequences beyond Syria.'
Kissinger has also warned that there could be dire international consequences for the U.S. if the world sees lawmakers in Washington turning down Obama's request for a military strike order.
'If the president of the United States for the first time in American history, so far as one can tell, is refused authority by the Congress to do what he has declared in the national interest, the impact of that on allies and people we’ll have to be in possible confrontation with will be enormous,' Kissinger said Sept. 4 on Fox News.
His biggest contribution to resolving the Syria crisis in the long term, however, could be the suggestion that Syria should no longer remain Syria.
Catbird seat: Russia's diplomatic maneuver has put Vladimir Putin, not
Barack Obama, in charge of policing Russia's ally Syria as it divests
itself of chemical weapons
'I have been against American military intervention, and have said so publicly,' Kissinger told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. 'This, however, is a use of weapons of mass destruction, which has consequences beyond Syria.'
Kissinger has also warned that there could be dire international consequences for the U.S. if the world sees lawmakers in Washington turning down Obama's request for a military strike order.
'If the president of the United States for the first time in American history, so far as one can tell, is refused authority by the Congress to do what he has declared in the national interest, the impact of that on allies and people we’ll have to be in possible confrontation with will be enormous,' Kissinger said Sept. 4 on Fox News.
His biggest contribution to resolving the Syria crisis in the long term, however, could be the suggestion that Syria should no longer remain Syria.
'First of all, Syria is not a
historic state,' Kissinger recalled during a summer gathering this year
at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of
Michigan.
'It was created in its present shape in 1920, and it was given that shape in order to facilitate the control of the country by France.'
He described the armed conflict there as 'a civil war between sectarian groups.'
Syria, Kissinger cautioned, is 'divided into many ethnic groups, a multiplicity of ethnic groups, and that means that an election doesn’t give you the same results as in the United States because every ethnic group votes for its own people. ... Moreover, these ethnic groups are very antagonistic to each other. You have Kurds, Druzes, Alawites, Sunnis and 10 to 12 Christian ethnic groups.'
The idea of cooperation in a coalition government, Kissinger said, is 'inconceivable,' a Financial Post columnist wrote in August.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2417703/John-Kerry-seeks-advice-Henry-Kissinger-historic-Syria-talks-Russia-aging-Cold-Warrior-wants-Assads-country-broken-pieces.html#ixzz2emuRRn2q
'It was created in its present shape in 1920, and it was given that shape in order to facilitate the control of the country by France.'
He described the armed conflict there as 'a civil war between sectarian groups.'
Syria, Kissinger cautioned, is 'divided into many ethnic groups, a multiplicity of ethnic groups, and that means that an election doesn’t give you the same results as in the United States because every ethnic group votes for its own people. ... Moreover, these ethnic groups are very antagonistic to each other. You have Kurds, Druzes, Alawites, Sunnis and 10 to 12 Christian ethnic groups.'
The idea of cooperation in a coalition government, Kissinger said, is 'inconceivable,' a Financial Post columnist wrote in August.
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