Henry Kissinger at Conférence de Montréal

U.S. needs bipartisan foreign policy: Kissinger
Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger says the United States needs to restore national unity to its foreign policy by developing a bipartisan approach once the divisive presidential election race ends this fall.
Kissinger strongly backs Republican John McCain but says leaders of both sides agree the United States needs a new consensus no matter who wins.
Energy concerns echo oil crisis of Nixon days, Kissinger says
Sean Silcoff, Financial Post
Q Oil is once again a major global issue. We’ve seen predictions this week that oil will hit US$200 a barrel. You lived through the first oil crisis during the Nixon administration. How should the world react to the high oil prices? Are there any measures that can be taken? How do you see this playing out?
A What is interesting to me is when we went through the crisis, we thought US$30 oil was unbearable. Ironically, the steps that we proposed at the time, which were more or less accepted but never implemented, are still the steps people are talking about and are not yet implemented. We established the International Energy Agency [IEA] to create emergency stockpiles, consumer co-operation in crisis, and possible joint action on prices as an opposite number to OPEC. We had recommended a floor price for oil so that alternative sources could not be bankrupted by piratical pricing or by political pricing. And then alternative sources of energy. All of this was sort of accepted as principles but never implemented. Now we face exactly the same problem, but now we have seen what happens when you don’t act in a crisis. At what point do transfers of wealth [to oil producing countries] become unacceptable? That will have to be decided by the consumers together.
Q Is there any action that can be taken against countries such as Venezuela, which has the capacity to produce more oil and has a foreign policy that is toxic to the United States?
A Well, I don’t think any one country can do it. This is why the IEA is a framework in which this can take place. So far it has concentrated on emergency stockpiles. That has been very successful. And on consumer information to each other. That has been fairly successful. But they have not gone the next step, to see at what point countermeasures can be taken.