Henry Kissinger: Scholar, Diplomat, Statesman
By Shashi P.B. Malla
Henry Kissinger, who has died, aged 100, — divided opinion among scholars, policy makers and journalists.
He was a complex man for a complex century and was both revered and reviled.
A committed practitioner of “realism” in the study of International Relations, he was both awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and roundly condemned as a war criminal.
[Realism is also called the ‘power politics’ school of thought. Political realism in one form or another has dominated academic thinking on international relations and the conceptions of policy makers and diplomats, certainly since Machiavelli contemplated the subject.
The ideas associated with political realism can be traced to the ancient Greeks and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is widely regarded as the first sustained attempt to explain the origins of international conflict in terms of the dynamics of power politics.
Political realism is the most successful and perhaps the most compelling of the classical paradigms that shaped the discipline of International Relations (Graham Evans/Jeffrey Newnham: Penguin Dictionary of International Relations).
An alternative South Asian viewpoint would be that of the ancient Kautilya/Chanakya in the Arthasastra. ]
He was thus a very divisive and controversial figure throughout his life and his legacy will also remain the same.
As US National Security Advisor (NSA) and Secretary of State (SoS), he energetically pursued the policy of détente – which thawed relations first with China and later with the Soviet Union during the Cold War (BBC, Nov. 29).
His shuttle diplomacy helped resolve the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict; and the negotiation of the Paris Peace Accords pulled America out of its long nightmare in Vietnam.
But what his supporters described as “Realpolitik” his critics condemned as immoral.
[ Realpolitik is a German term referring to the adoption of policies of limited objectives which had a reasonable chance of success, i.e. pragmatic. It has been most often used to describe Bismarck’s policies and indicates a shrewd attention to detail, an inclination to moderation and a willingness to use force if necessary.
It is often wrongly used as a synonym for power politics.]
Kissinger, the Grandmaster
Kissinger was the consummate grandmaster at the chessboard of world affairs. The renowned historian Niall Fergusen said: “For Kissinger, ultimately, you had to sacrifice lesser pieces on the board in pursuit of ultimate victory in the chess game.”
His axiom in foreign policy was to choose the lesser of many evils.
Kissinger was a ‘realist” in international politics, i.e. he pursued “power politics” in conjunction with Thucydides’ parameters: ‘The powerful do what they will, and the weak accept what they must’.
His ‘realism’ was different from Bismarck’s ‘Realpolitik’.
His legacy has to be seen in the intersection of power, morality and historical context.
Chile & Argentina
He was accused of – at the very least – tacit support for the bloody coup that overturned a socialist government in Chile, and of turning a blind eye to the Argentinean military’s “dirty war” against its own people.
Fleeing Nazi Germany
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Fuerth (near Nuremberg) in Bavaria on 27 May 1923.
The family left it late to flee Hitler’s Nazi persecution, but they joined the German-Jewish community in New York in 1938.
He changed his first name to “Henry” and was a naturally shy teenager, who never lost his accent or love of football (a life-long fan of FC Nuernberg, currently in the 2. Bundesliga).
He attended high school by night, while working at a shaving brush factory during the day. He planned to study accountancy but was drafted into the army.
Assigned to the infantry, his brains and language skills were put to use by military intelligence. Kissinger saw action at the Battle of the Bulge, and found himself running a captured German town – despite only holding the rank of private (the lowest rank in the army).
Towards the end of the war, he joined Counter Intelligence. The 23-year-old was given a team to hunt down former Gestapo officers ( from the German: Ge(heime) Sta(ats) Po(lizei) or Secret State Police under the Schutzstaffel (SS) – Protection Squadron, a para-military organization) with absolute power to arrest and detain suspects.
Academic Rise: The Role of Small Nuclear Wars
On his return to the United States, he studied political science at Harvard and rose up the academic ladder.
In 1957, he published his first book, Nuclear War and Foreign Policy, that said a limited atomic war was winnable. Couched in anti-pessimistic language, he claimed that “tactical” and “strategic” use of a new breed of smaller missiles might be rational.
The book got him noticed. Kissinger’s long march to fame and influence had begun. However, the “small nuclear theory” has been debunked. Vladimir Putin was heavily criticized in the West for threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, not least because of the acute dangers and uncertainty of nuclear fallout.
He became an aide to New York governor and presidential hopeful Nelson Rockefeller. And when Richard Nixon won the White House in 1968, Kissinger was offered a plum post: national security advisor.
It was a complex relationship. The president felt reliant on Kissinger’s advice on international relations, but was inclined to anti-Semitic outbursts and suspicion of American Jews.
The Cold War was at its height: Armageddon had only just been avoided over the Cuban Missile Crisis, American troops were still in Vietnam and Russia had recently invaded Czechoslovakia, putting an end to the Prague Spring.
The Birth of Détente
[Détente: A diplomatic term meaning a relaxation or a decreasing of tension in the previously strained relations between states.
Détente does not mean that conflicts have been resolved or that either side accepts the ideological principles of the other. Rather it should be seen a response to changed perceptions of the international system – an awareness of the possibility of mutual destruction, the mergence of new clusters of power and perhaps the promptings of domestic economic priorities.]
Nevertheless, Nixon and Kissinger set out to reduce the tension with the Soviet Union, reviving talks to scale down the size of their respective nuclear arsenals.
Simultaneously, a dialogue was opened with the Chinese government, through Premier Zhou En-lai. This improved Sino-American relations, and put diplomatic pressure on the Soviet leadership, who feared their huge neighbour.
Kissinger’s efforts led directly to Nixon’s historic trip to China in 1972, when he met both Zhou and Mao Zedong – and ended 23 years of diplomatic isolation and hostility.
In his last major interview, Kissinger said Chairman Mao was the “most dangerous” leader he met during his political career, citing the 90 million deaths resulting from a series of campaigns and reforms under Mao.
Vietnam & Cambodia
Meanwhile, the US was endeavouring to extract itself from Vietnam.
“Peace with honour” was a key Nixon election pledge, and Kissinger had long concluded that any US military victories were meaningless, as they could not “achieve a political reality that could survive our ultimate withdrawal” (BBC).
He entered negotiations with North Vietnam, but agreed with Nixon to clandestine bombing raids on neutral Cambodia, in an effort to deprive the communists of troops and supplies.
Altogether, the US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs across Cambodia and also sent in thousands of
More than 50,000 civilians were killed in Cambodia, which is roughly a third the size of France. And millions fled their homes. The destabilization helped give rise to the brutal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge movement, notorious for its “killing fields”.
During a tortuous series of negotiations with the Viet Cong in Paris, Kissinger – by now secretary of state – negotiated American military withdrawal from South Vietnam.
It won him the Nobel Peace Prize – alongside North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho – a decision bitterly attacked by peace campaigners.
Kissinger accepted the award “with humility”, and donated the prize money to the children of American servicemen killed in the conflict.
The Indo-Pakistani Connection
Even as Nixon and Kissinger were dreaming of the historic opening to China, the East Pakistan crisis erupted. Reports of human rights violations, genocide and mounting refugees into India were unwanted irritants for the US.
The US Consul General Archer Blood and his colleagues sent the famous ‘Blood Telegram’ that reported a reign of terror by the Pakistan army and protested US official silence, an early demonstration of the dissent channel in the US State Department now so active on Gaza.
When hostilities broke out after Pakistan’s attack on December 3, Kissinger and Nixon blamed India for the conflict and sent the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to bolster Pakistan.
Navtej Sarna, the former Indian ambassador to the US writes about what Nixon and Kissinger thought about India and the Indians during the war of liberation:
- “They’re such bastards.”
- Indians were “scavenging people”, “superb flatterers” and “the most aggressive goddam people around.”
(Times of India, Dec. 1).
The fact is that Nixon and Kissinger had great rapport with the Sandhurst-trained General Yahya Khan, the then military ruler of Pakistan and disliked Indira Gandhi intensely.
Power Politics in the Middle East
Shuttle diplomacy brought about a ceasefire following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
Nixon’s secret White House taping system captured Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir’s offering effusive thanks for the way he and Kissinger had treated her country.
But after she left, the tapes revealed a darker side. Neither Kissinger nor Nixon had any intention of putting pressure on the Soviet Union to allow Russian Jews to seek a new life in Israel.
“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” said Kissinger. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern” (BBC).
The election of the Marxist Salvador Allende as president of Chile, however, did trouble the United States. The new government was pro-Cuban and nationalized American companies.
The CIA carried out covert operations in Chile, in an attempt to help opposition groups overthrow the new government. Kissinger chaired the committee that authorized the action.
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” he said. “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves” (BBC).
Eventually, the military stepped in; and Allende died in a violent coup that saw General Augusto Pinochet seixe power. Many of his soldiers turned out to have been paid by the CIA.
In later years, Kissinger himself would be pursued by a number of courts investigating human rights abuse and the deaths of foreign nationals under the military regime.
A year later, Kissinger looked on as a tearful Richard Nixon left the White House – overwhelmed by the Watergate scandal. His successor, Vice President Gerald Ford, retained him as secretary of state.
He put pressure on Rhodesia’s white minority government to give up power, but was accused of ignoring the Argentine junta’s “disappearances” of its critics.
Power: The Ultimate Aphrodisiac
Controversy followed Kissinger after he left office in 1977. The offer of a chair at Columbia University was withdrawn after protests by students.
However, even out of power, he remained influential. He became a prolific globe-trotting author and international consultant.
He became a powerful critic of Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s (both Democrats) foreign policy, arguing the presidents wanted too fast a leap towards peace in the Middle East. For Kissinger, that could happen only at a diligent pace.
After 9/11, then-president George W. Bush asked him to chair the investigation into the attacks on New York and Washington (the Pentagon), but he was forced to stand down within weeks after refusing both to reveal his consultancy firm’s list of clients and to answer questions about conflicts of interest.
He held meetings with President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney to advise them over policy in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. “Victory over the insurgency,” he told them, “is the only exit strategy” (BBC).
affairs after his election in 2017, suggesting, among other things, acceptance of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s occupation of Crimea.
However, by the time he reached the age of 100 in May 2023, he had changed his view on Ukraine. After the Russian invasion in February 2022, he argued that “NATO military alliance after peace was secured.
Kissinger’s Versatility: On Climate
On many aspects of world affairs, Kissinger was highly prescient.
Nearly a half century ago, he had the foresight to warn the world about climate change: “The poorest nations, beset by manmade disasters, have been threatened by a natural one: the possibility of climactic changes in the monsoon belt and perhaps throughout the world,” the then U.S. Secretary of State told the UN General Assembly in 1974 (NYT archives).
It is indeed uncanny that an extraordinary insightful personality passed away last week just as global climate leaders and policy-makers gathered in Dubai to address some of the world’s most pressing climate issues.
Henry Kissinger had a vast list of contacts and a ready wit. “Power,” he was fond of saying, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
A larger-than-life character, he found himself at the centre of power during the most pivotal events of the last century.
To the fury of many, he remained unapologetic about his single-minded pursuit of US interests and the defence of his adopted country’s way of life.
“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy, he once declared, “will achieve neither perfection nor security” (BBC).
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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