China's dipolmatic coup

[putnam6]

Originally posted on ATS October 2023

As an old student of history, I’ve got  a copy, of course, of Henry Kissinger’s White House memoirs. All three volumes. I’ve learned a lot of things from the great master of modern diplomacy. One of them is the value of being a mediator between two powers in a region. If you can broker an agreement between them, they are both accepting your authority, up to a point, and you have become in effect the diplomatic boss of the area.

That’s what he was achieving for the United States in the Middle East in the years following the Yom Kippur war. In theory, disengagement was being negotiated “under the joint auspices of the United States and the Soviet Union” at a conference in Geneva. In practice, Kissinger was doing his best to keep the Soviets out of it, as Sadat shrewdly noticed (I was hoping to quote that conversation, but I can’t track it down quickly enough). The strategy of his “shuttle diplomacy” was to make the Arab nations aware that he alone could “deliver” concessions from the Israelis. If the Arabs wanted any kind of settlement, they worked through him or not at all. That is how Kissinger succeeded in making America the diplomatic “boss” of the Middle East for several decades. That policy has now broken down, certainly in the present century.

A few months back I noticed a news story to the effect that China had brokered an agreement between the long-term rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia. This should have set off alarm bells in the conspiracy theory community, but apparently it didn’t. The story has been buried in other news. I bet Henry Kissinger noticed.

I don’t often make predictions, but let me do a little predicting now. Let us suppose that, out of the blue, China comes forward with a peace initiative in the Middle East, promising that they will be able to hold back Iran and Hamas “and sitchlike” from their attacks on Israel and the West providing that Israel consents to certain restrictions. If Israel is obliged, in the end, to consent to a Peace Settlement on Chinese terms, that would be the first Chinese diplomatic coup.

If China went on to do the same thing, arranging a compromise agreement in the war between Russia and the Ukraine, that would be their second diplomatic coup. Such an agreement might call off the Russian attack dogs, while denying the Ukrainians access to the Crimea (to which, to be fair, they have no historic claim. Crimea was always the land of the Tatars).

Future historians might recognise the Peking Peace Settlements of 2024 as the moment when China became the diplomatic boss of the world.

I always read your posts when I come across them, they are well-thought-out and presented. But China better hurry...
I'll take meaningful and fair peace anyway we can get it. I just don't think they have the pull, power, and persuasion Uncle Sam has.