How will Henry Kissinger be remembered in Europe?

Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm.

How will Henry Kissinger be remembered in Europe?

There's always an amount of controversy around the person who's been around in politics in powerful positions for such a long time as he was. But primarily, I think he would be remembered as a great European. He was an American, no doubt. But he came out of the tragedy of Europe and he was deep concerned with all of the lessons that could be learned from the failure to preserve peace in Europe time after time. His first academic and his first book was about the Congress of Vienna. And then book after book after book, that was really around the same theme, how to preserve peace also in the age of nuclear weapons. And that, of course, from the European point of view, is not an insubstantial issue.

Is the nuclear renaissance going on in Europe?

Sort of. I would say. There are still countries that are very much opposed. The Germans are, the Austrians are, there might be others. But I noticed that in Dubai, COP28, there was now signed declaration by a number of European leaders as well to triple global nuclear power by 2050. So no doubt nuclear power will make a substantial contribution to the efforts to create a much greener and much more sustainable Europe in the decades to come.