Photo/Illutration Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger during a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (not pictured) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 22, 2019 (REUTERS)

Is it realistic to argue the only way for the international community to coexist is to maintain a “balance of power” where leading powers are locked in a perennial and high-risk rivalry? Such Cold War thinking of realpolitik can no longer be called sustainable pragmatism.

Henry Kissinger has died at the age of 100. He was the guru of U.S. diplomacy under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and continued serving as an influential adviser to successive administrations in Washington. He was a diplomatic giant who shaped U.S. foreign policy from the 1970s onward.

Despite the key roles he played in such milestone foreign policy achievements as the rapprochement between the United States and China, the detente in the relationship with the former Soviet Union, and mediating peace in the Middle East, his overall diplomatic legacy still remains a subject of complicated debate.

Kissinger pursued tough-minded pragmatism, aimed at maximizing national interest by using America’s overwhelming powers, and meticulously developed highly refined and well-calculated strategies for winning the great powers game. But he gave little attention or consideration to the sovereignty and human rights of smaller countries.

During the Vietnam War, he decided to authorize the unilateral bombing of neighboring Cambodia. The U.S. government, acting behind the scenes under Kissinger’s foreign policy leadership, was also involved in the 1973 military coup that overthrew Chile’s socialist regime and the 1971 genocide of Bengalis in East Pakistan by the Pakistani army and its local agents.

As the Soviet Union also perpetrated military and other kinds of intervention in smaller and weaker countries, these nations became battlegrounds for control between the Eastern and Western blocs. Many countries have not forgotten the history of the two superpowers repeatedly trampling on the principles of the rule of law and respect for sovereignty enshrined in the U.N. Charter and other international legal documents.

The United States has long wavered between interventionism as a way to promote freedom and democracy in the world and isolationism. After the end of the Cold War, in his book “Diplomacy,” Kissinger wrote, “What is new about the emerging world order is that, for the first time, the United States can neither withdraw from the world nor dominate it.” He argued that the era when American power seemed omnipotent had passed, and it was time for the United States to recognize its limitations and take action to create a new order based on that recognition.

This strategist’s late-life conversion to an advocate of a world free of nuclear weapons was apparently a change caused by confrontation with reality. He acknowledged the dangerous reality that there was no way to completely prevent the reckless use of nuclear arms, whether accidental or intentional. His argument gave impetus to nuclear disarmament discussions.

However, it is hard to say that such warnings have been incorporated into actual policy action.

The Iraq War tarnished America’s prestige, and the administration of Donald Trump pursued parochial America-first policies.

Russia began lawless aggression, and the nuclear powers are intensifying their arsenals. The prospect of the United States and China moving again toward a global turf battle is deeply disturbing.

“We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to,” Kissinger recently warned as he again called for a search for a stable balance point between major powers.

However, the world is no longer dominated by a few major powers; power is being dispersed among many nations in a multipolar structure.

An order built on the sacrifice of smaller nations for the stability of major powers is no longer acceptable. Kissinger’s death has left the world with a big and vital question. What should be the diplomatic guidelines of the 21st century that move beyond the theory of power-based balance?

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 2