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Henry Kissinger’s legacy and European geopolitics

With its assertiveness, Russia persistently pursues its unjustifiable goals through various means, reminiscent of Henry Kissinger’s theories on power politics. However, despite great effort, Russia’s track record of significant victories on the battlefield remains lacking. This presents an opportune moment for Europe and the broader western world to assert their dominance.

On November 29th 2023, a brilliant statesman, celebrity diplomat, exponent of power politics and influential scholar passed away at his home in Connecticut. Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, had advised dozens of policymakers during his outstanding long career. His legacy is assessed on a rather bittersweet note due to Kissinger’s realpolitik style of understanding global affairs. The notorious Nobel Peace Prize winner remains a controversial figure in rethinking power and strategy in philosophical and even existential terms.

April 11, 2024 - Erekle Iantbelidze - AnalysisIssue 3 2024Magazine

Photo: Domenico Fornas / Shutterstock

Conceptually, realpolitik is explained as a pragmatic view based on practical political objectives rather than on ideals. Although the term is widely used, Henry Kissinger stated that he has been regularly accused of conducting realpolitik as part of a campaign to simply label his policies. While he was serving as secretary of state in the 1970s, US foreign policy seemed ferocious and uncontested, irreversibly marking the political tensions of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, the dichotomy of political realism and idealism is still mainstream in Europe, especially after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The European Union and its member states made their viewpoints the cornerstone of a new “Geopolitical Commission”, but some consider that the world hardly witnessed any European geopolitical breakthroughs from 2019 up until 2024.

Kissinger’s quest: harmony between power and morality

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