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Who will you turn to now that Kissinger is gone? Tony Blair takes the stage

2024-01-12 21:58:00Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE
Who will you turn to now that Kissinger is gone? Tony Blair takes the stage
Tony Blair and Henry Kissinger

Only one person possesses the right experience, temperament, and ambition to assume the position of decision-maker and wise man.

The death of Henry Kissinger last November created the most exclusive job vacancy in the world: that of world's wisest man. When he left his job as secretary of state in 1977, Kissinger didn't retire, but ascended to a higher level: he became an unofficial adviser to world leaders of every party, a source of wisdom on all things geopolitics, provider of strong commentary for radio and television, and political consultant on all matters. Who can replace him?

To answer this question, we must first ask why Kissinger was irreplaceable for so long. He was a German-born statesman and a remarkable combination of opposites: highly intelligent but practical-minded, widely read but fixated on flashy social functions (at a Met Gala he was overheard asking a friend of invited, "who is this Fluff Daddy?").

He managed to be everywhere and he knew everyone: I remember watching him at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in the early 2010s, which was packed with Russian and Western people and politicians, in which he was the second-oldest person popular in the room after Vladimir Putin. However, he also wrote a number of first-rate books culminating in the much-debated publication Six Studies in World Strategy.

The most obvious candidates for Kissinger's throne are American politicians because, as the country with the most power, the US prefers to listen to its own. Kissinger's Republican colleagues have ruled themselves out, citing neoconservative overreach under George W. Bush and populist disorder in the era of Donald Trump. Who would like to take advice from Paul Wolfoëitz? Or Steve Bannon? Their exclusion brings us to the Democrats of the "Baby Boom" period.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are both contenders – Bill as the president who presided over a golden age of globalization and Hillary as an accomplished secretary of state. But Bill is struggling because of his personal life, and Hillary doesn't understand the populist forces that destroyed her presidential run and continue to reshape the world. After dabbling in film production, podcasts and hanging out with famous people,

Barack Obama has recently re-entered politics as Joe Biden's adviser on artificial intelligence. But he still seems to lack the gravitas for the role – he achieved nothing in foreign affairs that would justify his Nobel Peace Prize – and perhaps lacks the enthusiasm. John Kerry is very pompous and tough – more of a classical Roman statesman statue than a real person. Al Gore is a monomaniac.

What about non-American politicians? Angela Merkel was one of Germany's longest-serving chancellors and, during the Trump era, acted as an informal leader for the free world. As Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023,

Jacinda Ardern moved her party to the centre, got Covid under control, faced a horrific gun attack and retired with dignity. Kevin Rudd, Australia's prime minister from 2007 to 2010 and now its ambassador to the US, is a wise voice in dealing with China, the greatest strategic challenge of our era.

Outside the West, Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore, and Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, the president of Indonesia, deserve consideration – Lee as the leader of the world's best-run country and Jokowi as the leader of the largest Muslim population. in the world and a representative of one of the most powerful global forces, the Asian middle classes.

However, none of these characters are entirely suitable. Merkel's reputation is shrinking by the year as we pay the price for her lack of resolve, particularly her failure to improve Germany's ability to produce its own energy.

Ardern is a geostrategic lightweight and Rudd is a character without much influence. Lee and Jokowi are both "silent", or troubled, politicians: for all his intellect (he was a top maths scholar at Cambridge), Lee has not demonstrated his father's enthusiasm for commenting on global affairs, while Jokowi's support for the death penalty for drug dealers may give many Westerners an excuse to turn a blind eye.

That leaves only one suitable candidate among former world leaders. After Kissinger's death, politicians around the world, from Bill Clinton to Vladimir Putin, raced to praise him as much as possible. But perhaps the greatest praise came from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"There is no one like Henry Kissinger... From the first time I met him as a young opposition leader of the Labor Party in 1995, struggling to form views on foreign policy, to the last time I visited him in New York, and later when he spoke at the annual meeting of my institute, I have always been in awe of him...If it is possible for diplomacy, at its highest level, to be an art form, Henry was an artist.” Let's consider this a successful job application.

Blair has many Kissinger qualities. He has admirers from across the political spectrum – Margaret Thatcher hailed him as the Labor Party's resurgent, David Cameron presented himself as "Blair's heir" and George Osborne, Cameron's right-hand man, described him as a "master". .” His political connections extend all over the world, from the 7 countries of the so-called "Stans" in Central Asia to the Middle East to Africa. He is a big figure both in Europe and in the United States.

He has participated in two peacemaking processes – in Northern Ireland, as prime minister, culminating in the Good Friday Agreement, and, less successfully, in the Middle East as special envoy from 2007 to 2015. His institute think tank, the Blair Institute, which has a staff of 450 people makes Kissinger's institute, "Kissinger Associates," look minimalistic. Blair is even the right age for a wise global intern: he was 54 when he left office (Kissinger was 53) and is now 70, in very good shape.

For his critics, Blair also has a surprising number of Kissinger contortions. Both men have been accused of being war criminals – Blair for Iraq and Kissinger for many things on the list. To get an idea, you can read "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens or watch "The Trial of Tony Blair" directed by Simon Cellan Jones.

Both men have been accused of treading a fine line between offering political advice and making money from it. And both men are, or were, part of a cosmopolitan world of conferences, lavish parties and celebrity friends.

There are also striking differences between two men who were born 30 years apart. Blair lacks Kissinger's intellectual depth, a depth that was fueled by his personal experience of tragedy as a German Jew who experienced Nazism. It is impossible to imagine that a book like Barry Geen's The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World could be written about the architect of Cold Britain.

However, the comparison is not simply negative. Blair's gift for clarity and his interpretive voice are more suited to the modern age than Kissinger's convoluted sentences and thick German accent. Blair understands that modern geopolitics must embrace health care, demographics and climate change as well as grand strategy.

In particular, he is much more informed than Kissinger about Africa, the continent with the youngest population in the world and with the capacity to destabilize Europe, if this population is not absorbed into productive employment in the mother countries.

Blair is the only global statesman with the talent to deliver an eloquent speech or make a tangible intervention on behalf of liberal values. The US is too consumed by domestic culture and too plagued by domestic pressure groups to maintain the posture it held during the Cold War; The EU is too dependent on gray apparatchiks who say nothing and say it badly.

It is time for Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair to take up the mantle of a Dr. The new and improved Henry Kissinger.

*Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is a former writer at the Economist and author of "The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World"./ Bloomberg


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