Henry Kissinger at 100: A Centenary of Crimes against Humanity
By Tom Engelhardt
Henry Alfred Kissinger turned one hundred on May 27 of this year. Once a teenage refugee from Nazi Germany, for many decades an adviser to presidents, and an avatar of American realpolitik, he’s managed to reach the century mark while still evidently retaining all his marbles. That those marbles remain hard and cold is no surprise.
Introduction
It’s hard for powerful political actors to give up the stage once their performances are over. Many crave an encore even as their audience begins to gaze at newer stars. Sometimes regaining relevance and influence is only possible after a political memory wipe, in which echoes of their terrible actions and even crimes, domestic or international, fade into silence.
This was certainly the case for Nixon who, after resigning in disgrace to avoid impeachment in 1974, worked hard for decades to once again be seen as a wise man of international relations. He published his memoirs (for a cool $2 million), while raking in another $600,000 for interviews with David Frost (during which he infamously said that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal”). His diligence was rewarded in 1986 with a Newsweek cover story headlined, “He’s Back: The Rehabilitation of Richard Nixon.”
Of course, for the mainstream media (and the House of Representatives debating his possible impeachment in 1974), Nixon’s high crimes and misdemeanors involved just the infamous Watergate break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters and his subsequent attempts to cover it up. Among members of the House, only twelve, led by the Jesuit priest Robert Drinan, had the courage to suggest that Nixon be charged with the crime that led directly to the death of an estimated 150,000 civilians: the secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war.
More recently, we’ve seen the rehabilitation of George W. Bush, under whose administration the United States committed repeated war crimes. Those included the launching of an illegal war against Iraq under the pretext of eliminating that country’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, attempting to legalize torture and unlawful detentions, and causing the death of almost half a million civilians. No matter. All it took for the mainstream media to welcome him back into the fold of “responsible” Republicans was to spend some years painting portraits of American military veterans and taking an oblique swipe or two at then president Donald Trump.
Main Content
If nothing else, Kissinger’s approach to international politics has been consistent for more than half a century. Only actions advancing the military and imperial might of the United States were to be pursued. To be avoided were those actions that might diminish its power in any way or — in the Cold War era — enhance the power of its great adversary, the Soviet Union. Under such a rubric, any indigenous current favoring independence — whether political or economic — or seeking more democratic governance elsewhere on Earth came to represent a threat to this country. Such movements and their adherents were to be eradicated — covertly, if possible; overtly, if necessary.
Richard Nixon’s presidency was, of course, the period of Kissinger’s greatest influence. Between 1969 and 1974, Kissinger served as the architect of US actions in key locales globally. Here are just a few of them:
Papua, East Timor, and Indonesia: In 1969, in an effort to keep Indonesia fully in the American Cold War camp, Kissinger put his imprimatur on a fake plebiscite in Papua, which had been seeking independence from Indonesia. He chose to be there in person during an “election” in which Indonesia counted only the ballots of 1,100 handpicked “representatives” of the Papuan population. Unsurprisingly, they voted unanimously to remain part of Indonesia.
In 1975, Kissinger also greenlighted Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, during which hundreds of thousands died. In contravention of US law, President Gerald Ford’s administration (in which Kissinger continued to serve as national security adviser and secretary of state after Nixon’s resignation) provided the Indonesian military with weapons and training. Kissinger waved off any legal concerns with a favorite aphorism: “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Southeast Asia: Beginning in 1969, Kissinger was also the architect of Richard Nixon’s secret bombing campaign in Cambodia, an attempt to interdict the flow of supplies from North Vietnam to the revolutionary Viet Cong in South Vietnam. He believed that it would force the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table. In this, the great statesman was sadly mistaken. It’s fair to say, in fact, that Kissinger either initiated or at least supported just about every one of the ugly tactics the US military used in its ultimately losing war in Vietnam, from the carpet-bombing of North Vietnam to the widespread use of napalm and the carcinogenic herbicide Agent Orange to the CIA’s Phoenix Program, which led to the torturing or killing of more than twenty thousand people.
Pakistan and Bangladesh: In 1971, in a famous “tilt” toward Pakistan, Kissinger gave tacit support to that country’s military dictator General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan. In response to a surprise victory by an opposition party in Pakistan’s first democratic election, Yahya then loosed his military on the people of East Pakistan, that party’s geographical base. Three million people died in the ensuing genocidal conflict that eventually led to the creation of the state of Bangladesh. In addition, as many as ten million members of Bengali ethnic groups fled to India, inflaming tensions between Pakistan and India, which eventually erupted in war. Although the US Congress had forbidden military support for either nation, Kissinger arranged for an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to travel to the Bay of Bengal and provide war materiel to Pakistan. (By then, contempt for congressional restrictions had become a habit for him.)
Latin America: There was a time when September 11 called to mind not the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but the violent 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende, Chile’s elected socialist president. That coup, which made General Augusto Pinochet the country’s dictator, was the culmination of a multiyear US campaign of economic and political sabotage, orchestrated by Henry Kissinger.
If you google images for “realpolitik,” the first thing you’ll see is a drawing of Henry Kissinger holding forth to a rapt Richard Nixon. As a political thinker who prides himself on never having been swayed by passion, Kissinger would seem the perfect exemplar of a realpolitik worldview.
He eschews the term, however, probably because, given his background, he recognizes its roots in the nineteenth-century German liberal tradition, where it served as a reminder not to be blinded by ideology or aspirational belief when taking in a political situation. Philosophically, realpolitik was a belief that a dispassionate examination of any situation, uninflected by ideology, was the most effective way to grasp the array of forces present in a particular historical moment.
Realpolitik has, however, come to mean something quite different in the United States, being associated not with “what is” (an epistemological stance) but with “what ought to be” — an ethical stance, one that privileges only this country’s imperial advantage. In the realpolitik world of Henry Kissinger, actions are good only when they sustain and advance American strategic power globally. Any concern for the well-being of human beings, or for the law and the Constitution, not to mention democratic values globally, is, by definition, illegitimate if not, in fact, a moral failing.
That is the realpolitik of Henry Alfred Kissinger, an ethical system that rejects ethics as unreal. It should not surprise anyone that such a worldview would engender in a man with his level of influence a history of crimes against law and humanity.
In fact, however, Kissinger’s brand of realpolitik is itself delusional. The idea that the only “realistic” choices for Washington’s leaders require privileging American global power over every other consideration has led this country to its current desperate state — a dying empire whose citizens live in ever-increasing insecurity. In fact, choosing America first (as Donald Trump would put it) is not the only choice, but one delusional option among many. Perhaps there is still time, before the planet burns us all to death, to make other, more realistic choices.
Conclusion
If you google images for “realpolitik,” the first thing you’ll see is a drawing of Henry Kissinger holding forth to a rapt Richard Nixon. As a political thinker who prides himself on never having been swayed by passion, Kissinger would seem the perfect exemplar of a realpolitik worldview.
He eschews the term, however, probably because, given his background, he recognizes its roots in the nineteenth-century German liberal tradition, where it served as a reminder not to be blinded by ideology or aspirational belief when taking in a political situation. Philosophically, realpolitik was a belief that a dispassionate examination of any situation, uninflected by ideology, was the most effective way to grasp the array of forces present in a particular historical moment.
Realpolitik has, however, come to mean something quite different in the United States, being associated not with “what is” (an epistemological stance) but with “what ought to be” — an ethical stance, one that privileges only this country’s imperial advantage. In the realpolitik world of Henry Kissinger, actions are good only when they sustain and advance American strategic power globally. Any concern for the well-being of human beings, or for the law and the Constitution, not to mention democratic values globally, is, by definition, illegitimate if not, in fact, a moral failing.
That is the realpolitik of Henry Alfred Kissinger, an ethical system that rejects ethics as unreal. It should not surprise anyone that such a worldview would engender in a man with his level of influence a history of crimes against law and humanity.
In fact, however, Kissinger’s brand of realpolitik is itself delusional. The idea that the only “realistic” choices for Washington’s leaders require privileging American global power over every other consideration has led this country to its current desperate state — a dying empire whose citizens live in ever-increasing insecurity. In fact, choosing America first (as Donald Trump would put it) is not the only choice, but one delusional option among many. Perhaps there is still time, before the planet burns us all to death, to make other, more realistic choices.
