Washington is on the brink of war with Moscow and Beijing, says former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

"We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to," he noted.

According to him, Washington rejected traditional diplomacy and, in the absence of a great leader, brought the world to the abyss of war over Ukraine and Taiwan. The former US Secretary of State noted that "the only thing that can be done is not to escalate tension and create options, and for this there must be some purpose."

Kissinger, who in the late 1960s and early 1970s engaged in extensive negotiations with the Vietnamese communists even as the US military was at war against them, said that modern American leaders tend to view diplomacy as having a personal relationship with the enemy and tend to view negotiations from a missionary rather than a psychological point of view, seeking to convert or condemn their interlocutors rather than penetrate their thoughts.

Instead, he said, the US should look for a "balance" between itself, Russia and China.

The term refers to a kind of balance of power with the legitimacy of sometimes opposing values, Kissinger explained.