What would Henry Kissinger have said at the Munich Security Conference?

By: Ricardo Israel - 15/02/2026

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The Munich Security Conference (MSC) is taking place between February 13th and 15th of this year at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel. This 62nd conference is expected to draw 200 representatives from 120 countries and is undoubtedly the most important geopolitical event in the West. It has gained renewed importance due to its growing prominence, perhaps becoming the most striking element of our current historical era. From a news perspective, this conference is the equivalent of what Davos represents for economic globalism.

Marco Rubio arrived in Germany with the mission of continuing to pressure Europe to invest more in security and defense, as well as continuing to make explicit the differences that exist on issues such as Ukraine, Russia, and the future of an alliance that is not seen today as having the same usefulness as it had in the past, seemingly saying that perhaps it should have disappeared with the USSR, just as happened with the Warsaw Pact.

Even in the worst-case scenario, NATO would not disappear today due to the staggering cost of agreeing on a defense and security policy with 28 different countries, as outlined in an open letter signed by ambassadors and former military officials of that institution, which stated that the investment made benefited the US more than the Europeans. However, if the Republicans win the next elections, it would undoubtedly be reduced to a minimal expression and would no longer play a leading role globally.

In any case, since Rubio has simply repeated what he has said more than once, it is to be expected that, given the reaction of his political leaders on that occasion, at least the intelligence services of the United Kingdom and France would not have been surprised as happened last year with the intervention of Vice President JD Vance and his very harsh criticism of European policies on immigration, populist parties and freedom of expression, especially on this last point, where Europeans, with exceptions such as Hungary, felt particularly offended when he asserted that the continent was suffering a "regression" in this regard, although in my opinion, this has indeed occurred with that freedom.

In fact, from that moment on, the US became perhaps the only country in the world to have made this issue relevant to its foreign policy, recalling how the issue of human rights has been incorporated into the Jimmy Carter administration to this day. The US has incorporated it in conjunction with the protection of its giant technology companies, including X, Meta, and Google, not only in Europe but also in Brazil and other countries, serving as a basis for international sanctions against officials and judges who have sanctioned executives of these companies, always based on US law, as occurred in the case of Judge De Moraes and his family, sanctions that were later lifted.

In any case, Rubio, in his own style, seems less interested in confrontation than Vance, his rival in the race to succeed Trump as president. Rubio will not attend the forum after his visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan, one of the seven places where the US has mediated in favor of peace and the maintenance of the ceasefire. He has not missed an opportunity to demand greater European involvement in conflicts such as the one between Armenia and Azerbaijan, where, for example, Israel has shifted its support to the latter. This shift is due to the crucial role the US played in the 12-day war it waged with Iran last year, which was key to the deployment of the Mossad in Tehran. Azerbaijanis are one of the ethnic groups persecuted by the ayatollahs, so the warm welcome extended to the Israelis is striking, considering that they are a Muslim country and an ally of Turkey.

It is just one of the surprising geopolitical changes that have taken place recently and that lead Marco Rubio to say that “we live in a new era in geopolitics, and it is going to require all of us to review what that looks like and what our role is going to be, and, apparently, the US thinks that the European Union (EU) is not doing that yet.

Furthermore, all of this is taking place after the NATO Secretary General reached an agreement on the Greenland issue, since ultimately the US de-escalated its aggressive rhetoric regarding the acquisition of Greenland. However, it is highly unlikely that the US will return; it is simply no longer necessary, given that it obtained everything it wanted. This is because it can increase its military presence at the same time that NATO has begun to share the underlying view of Trump's statements on the importance of the Arctic, including the current threat posed by China and Russia, something previously denied by the Europeans.

Regarding how to satisfy the Europeans, Rubio acknowledged that it seemed reasonable that his allies “wanted to know where we are going, where we would like to go, and where we would like to go with them.” Undoubtedly, this Munich Conference is taking place at a crucial moment in terms of defining key positions, especially since it is being held shortly before Trump convenes the first session of his Peace Council in Washington on February 19, immediately following his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu to resolve differences over Iran. NATO has not been a significant presence at this Council, nor has Europe, but it could also give rise to a new geopolitical institutional framework, if indeed it is capable of replacing the UN in ensuring global peace.

If the latter were true, it would be in compliance with the secondary role that the National Security Strategy 2025 assigns to both Europe and NATO from a geopolitical perspective. Rubio sends another message in this regard, as he will be traveling accompanied by Sarah Rogers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and a vocal critic of EU policies, including their current irrelevance.

The final message is that after his participation, Rubio will continue his tour of Slovakia and Hungary, where nationalist leaders, close to Putin and Trump, govern while also being very critical of the EU.

The novelty lies in the transfer to Munich of the polarization and division that characterizes the US, as the Democrats made their presence felt with the message that Europe should confront and resist Trump, since if they win the 2028 presidential election, the US would change, rendering everything done by his administration meaningless. The Democratic presence was represented by two presidential hopefuls: California Governor Newsom and Representative Ocasio-Cortez, who arrived with an alternative message and criticism of Trump, while also highlighting their internal differences. Apparently, there is no consensus at the moment, and it also shows that neither of them has a clear understanding of international issues. In any case, it is a change that was well received by some Europeans, since the major flaw of the Democratic opposition is precisely that, over the years, it has not demonstrated itself as a viable alternative beyond rejecting what Trump says and does. Here, at least, we saw the beginnings of a process that should lead to a leader for the party, a position that is currently vacant.

Meanwhile, there are developments everywhere, on which the US should have a position, given that it remains the world's leading power. For example, Switzerland is seeking to hold a referendum to limit its population to 10 million inhabitants, which is a novel approach to self-limiting growth, as a way to regulate an immigration problem where Europe really doesn't seem to know what to do.

This lack of clarity regarding what to do brings up the name of Henry Kissinger, and in places like this Munich Conference, more than one person must have wondered, as I am, what someone like the most important American diplomat of the second half of the 20th century would do; that is, what Henry Kissinger's proposal or analysis would be to address the issue of Ukraine-Russia or that of China, given that Marco Rubio came acknowledging the obvious, that he does not know if Russia wants to end the war in Ukraine, although he did say something that is not obvious to everyone, in the sense that Washington wanted to "strengthen" the transatlantic relationship.

The truth is, it's not difficult to answer, even though he died after turning 100 on November 29, 2023, and during his lifetime wrote extensively about the former USSR and China, as well as books on leadership, remaining intellectually active until the end of his days, even offering his opinions on Artificial Intelligence, or on how to respond to Russia's reoccupation of Crimea, the invasion of Ukraine, and how to prevent World War III. Someone like Kissinger would likely have a detailed opinion regarding the 20 points of the latest US peace plan, just as, as a student of history, he would have a personal perspective on Russia's doctrine of "historical regions," Putin's map for redrawing Eurasia, since that was a distant origin of a perhaps inevitable conflict, if Putin considered the neighboring regions as "artificial creations," with the potential for a long-term confrontation with the West, should the conflict with Ukraine be prolonged.

Kissinger was convinced that the US and China had to learn to coexist, for which they would have less than 10 years. He would therefore be pleased if the 2025 National Security Strategy reduced the current conflict to a primarily economic confrontation, alongside an ongoing negotiation process. Regarding the possibility of negotiating with Putin, he repeatedly emphasized that Israel had done so in Syria, achieving a mutually satisfactory outcome, despite their consistent support for rivals, as Russia had done with Bashar al-Assad.

The truth is that everything indicates Kissinger remained the most lucid expression of the so-called realist school, which so guided both his academic work and the decisions he made as a government official. His thinking always seemed to begin with the premise that even Russia and China needed sound diplomacy, and that, compared to China, Ukraine would be a minor, geographically contained conflict, meaning that China alone would have the capacity to trigger a third world war.

He had an understanding of the Ukrainian conflict that would make him a welcome interlocutor for Putin, since after 2014 he advised against a harsh response to Russia for the annexation of Crimea, and that dialogue should remain open, considering its crucial importance to Russians, as it was historically part of the Russian Empire, fundamental to its navy, and was only transferred to Ukraine as part of an administrative agreement reached in 1954 and promoted by a Ukrainian, Nikita Khrushchev.

At the same time, he always seemed to understand that the war—the actual invasion of Ukraine—didn't begin on February 24, 2022, but rather in 2014 with the occupation of a large part of Donbas and the aforementioned Crimea. In general, I believe that the answer to the question of whether there is a solution to achieve peace in Ukraine wouldn't be very different from the path the US has taken today to reach a ceasefire. However, given Russia's repeated refusal to move forward on this path, I think that, as with the détente strategy followed with the USSR, the only option that might interest current Russia and a personal leader like Putin would be to accept his position that resolving the conflict would require reviewing the dissolution of the USSR and opening negotiations to establish definitive borders. Putin says this shouldn't be the administrative division of the USSR into 15 republics, but rather a political agreement between the US and current Russia as its legal successor.

Incidentally, this is difficult for the US to accept, as it would require negotiations as extensive as the Détente of the last century, and not the haste of a government like Trump's, which is facing a tight deadline for the November midterm elections. From the outset, it requires reversing the trip that Nixon and Kissinger made in 1972. For this, it certainly does not have the support in Trump that it had with Nixon.

Therefore, something is needed that there is no evidence of today: a different scenario must open up, where Russia is offered something similar to what was offered to China at that time, an incentive that would lead Russia to renounce the alliance it has today for the first time in history with China, something that did not exist even during communism.

There is no evidence that the US wants to go down this path, where there is more darkness than light, but my opinion is that, even if I didn't support him, I would understand better than many why Trump is pursuing a course where, to this day, despite all the concessions made, he has failed to convince Putin. It's part of a relationship that, with Trump, would be very different from the one he had with Nixon, as it would be difficult for him to adapt to Putin's frequent changes of opinion, sometimes even within the same day.

Regarding China, I believe Kissinger would understand that the Chinese leadership, and Xi Jinping in particular, feel insulted by what they perceive as condescending treatment from the US. Their economic power makes them a distinct rival, more powerful than the USSR ever was, except militarily. In that sense, unlike the current negotiations, Kissinger would review in detail what the US itself did to dethrone Great Britain as a superpower in the last century, since China is now doing the same, step by step, to try to do the same to the US.

My opinion is that, just as in his memoirs he recounts how, when he asked Zhou Enlai what he thought of the French Revolution, he found the brilliant response that it was too soon to form an opinion, today he would surely echo General de Gaulle's view that in World War II, Japan and Germany lost the war, while the United Kingdom and France were defeated countries, having entered the war as major colonial powers and ending it as second-rate powers. Applied to the current European conflict, I would say the same as a geopolitical specialist pointed out in these pages: that Ukraine was losing the war, but Russia was being defeated, considering the military performance expected of it on the day of the invasion. It is in this sense that Kissinger would surely advise reading Graham's book, Thucydides' Trap, to understand the moment in which China and the US would find themselves, and to understand why, in relation to Taiwan, he would in no case advise following the path taken by the Biden administration in relation to the invasion of Ukraine, since that path would destroy the island and devastate the world economy.

In other words, what Kissinger would do is lower the temperature, never raise the decibel level; in other words, what Trump has tried to do, perhaps with more success with China than in the Ukrainian scenario. Therefore, perhaps his final advice would be to try to do the same thing that has been successful in the Middle East for the purposes of a ceasefire: “define objectives that can bring people together. Find means, describable means, to achieve those objectives,” adding what allowed détente with the USSR in the context of the Cold War, that is, avoid what failed with Biden and what has also failed so far with the Russian invasion, in the sense that “the all-or-nothing attitude is a threat to seeking détente.”

And that includes his final opinion, expressed during his lifetime, about the Russian leader, namely that “in the end, Putin made a catastrophic error in judgment.” Ultimately, I believe Kissinger would have supported a return to the solution agreed upon in the Minsk Agreements (2014-2015)—international agreements signed by Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany, the so-called Normandy Format, to halt the first Donbas war. These agreements established a ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weaponry, and a political roadmap that stipulated the federalization of the territory, respect for the rights of the Russian minority, and regional autonomy. They were also signed by the Russian separatists. Ultimately, this is what could have prevented the war, and despite not being respected by either Russia or Ukraine, everything fell apart with the invasion.

Kissinger's advice would have been to return to the only thing that could have prevented the invasion. Today, I believe Kissinger would also add that this would be the way to achieve a European victory by establishing a stable border. The context would be what he told The Economist: "I think we all have to admit that we are all in a new world (where) there is no guaranteed direction and (where) the United States desperately needs long-term strategic thinking." Something it still lacks, I would add, as well as the recovery of the lost consensus, which so diminishes its role as a great power.

@israelzipper

-Master's and PhD in Political Science (University of Essex), Bachelor of Laws (University of Barcelona), Lawyer (University of Chile), former presidential candidate (Chile, 2013)

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».