The reason Xi and Putin liked Henry Kissinger

On Henry Kissinger’s passing, Xi Jinping published a letter, extolling this ‘old friend of China’ as a man of ‘outstanding strategic vision’, whose exploits not just benefited the relationship between China and the United States, but also ‘changed the world’. Xi’s tribute reads like an indictment of the current lamentable state of Sino-American relations (clearly by design). Xi presents Kissinger as a model statesman that China would like to have in place of the current US foreign policy elite. 

Russia’s Vladimir Putin, too, sent a rare letter of condolences, praising Kissinger as an ‘outstanding diplomat, wise and farsighted statesman’, who pursued ‘a pragmatic foreign policy’ and helped broker détente. Andrei Kortunov, a foreign policy hand with the Russian International Affairs Council, contrasted Kissinger’s many talents with their ‘critical shortage’ among current US leaders. 

Such commentary mythologises and simplifies Kissinger as an ideal interlocutor who Beijing and Moscow could deal with. If only such statesmen were still around! The reality was much more complicated.