Henry Kissinger's Contrasting Heritage
© AFP 2024 BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
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On November 29, at the age of 100, Henry Kissinger, an American political scientist and former US Secretary of State, passed away in his Connecticut home. He is recognized for having established détente with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. He has a contentious legacy because he was involved in numerous significant international events.
Henry Kissinger, who held positions as US secretary of state and national security adviser under Presidents Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, had a unique impact on US foreign policy for more than 50 years. He remained outspoken on foreign policy even after leaving the public eye, acting as a wise counselor and analyst.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences over Kissinger's death, calling the ex-secretary of state an outstanding diplomat, and a "wise and visionary statesman” in a telegram published on the Kremlin website.
"Henry Kissinger's name is inextricably linked with his pragmatic foreign policy, which in its time paved the way for a detente in international tensions and made it possible to reach the most important Soviet-American agreements that contributed to strengthening global security," Putin said.
Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng said he was “deeply shocked and saddened” at Kissinger’s death, adding that, “He will always remain alive in the hearts of the Chinese people as a most valued old friend.”
Former US Secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, tweeted that he would always be “grateful for his gracious advice and help during my own time as Secretary.” Pompeo said that Kissinger was “always supportive and always informed, his wisdom made me better and more prepared after every one of our conversations.”
Kissinger’s contentious legacy of foreign policy actions may have played out for good and for ill, but irrespective of the geopolitical winds of change, he always insisted that Russia should be perceived "as an essential element of any new global equilibrium.”
“In the 1960s and 1970s, I perceived international relations as an essentially adversarial relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the evolution of technology, a conception of strategic stability developed that the two countries could implement, even as their rivalry continued in other areas. The world has changed dramatically since then. In particular, in the emerging multipolar order, Russia should be perceived as an essential element of any new global equilibrium, not primarily as a threat to the United States,” wrote Kissinger in February 2016.
US-Soviet Détente
It was in 1968 that then-President-elect Richard Nixon tapped Henry Kissinger for the position of his National Security Adviser. Accordingly, from 1969 to 1976 Kissinger had a hand in shaping US foreign policy under Presidents Nixon and then Gerald Ford.
Kissinger is credited with having pioneered the policy of US détente with the USSR, with the main issue centered upon arms limitation treaties between the two nuclear powers. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), aimed at restraining the arms race in long-range or intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons, resulted in the signing of SALT I and SALT II in 1972 and 1979, respectively. Kissinger played a significant role in driving the strategy from Washington’s side.
After US President Ronald Reagan appointed Kissinger to serve on his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the 1980s, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev struck the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987. In January 1989, Kissinger travelled to the USSR to meet with Gorbachev to discuss the issue of coexistence between the two powers as well as a roadmap of the USSR's integration into the world economy, the creation of legal and economic bases for future collaboration. However, once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, all these plans were scrapped, with Washington embarking upon its unipolar drive, ranging from overseas wars and regime change to continuous NATO expansion eastward.
NATO’s Proxy War in Ukraine
Shortly after the February 2014 Euromaidan coup, which culminated in the ouster of Ukraine’s government, and its replacement with a pro-US, pro-NATO regime hostile to Russia, Kissinger warned that Kiev should not be allowed to join NATO.
In 2016, Kissinger wrote in The National Interest of the importance of acknowledging Russia’s security interests, saying:
“To a country across which foreign armies have marched for centuries from both East and West, security will always need to have a geopolitical, as well as a legal, foundation. When its security border moves from the Elbe 1,000 miles east towards Moscow, Russia’s perception of world order will contain an inevitable strategic component. The challenge of our period is to merge the two perspectives — the legal and the geopolitical — in a coherent concept.”
The American politician also noted that the United States failed to take seriously Russia’s proposals for security guarantees at the end of 2021, which could have been a starting point for negotiations. Henry Kissinger met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on more than one occasion, saying that the Russian leader “should be seen as a character from the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, with all the contradictions and doubts about his own people.”
In May, at the World Economic Forum, Kissinger called for a diplomatic settlement in Ukraine to restore the status quo ante bellum, i.e. the situation as it was before Russia launched its military special operation in February. Kissinger came under fierce criticism after he suggested Ukraine should cede some land to Russia to achieve a peace deal as he addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos in May 2022. He said that this would be the most favorable scenario and a "substantial achievement" for NATO.
Henry Kissinger told The Spectator that there were three possible scenarios for bringing the Ukraine crisis to an end, ranging from a freeze of the current situation at the front, which Russia would be able to consider a victory, to a scenario under which the US makes an attempt to drive Russia out of “all Ukrainian territories,” which would risk all-out Russia-NATO confrontation, and finally, a return to the situation as it was in February, i.e. the start of the special military operation. The latter was the preferred option, according to the former US Secretary of State.
“Ukraine will be reconstituted in the shape it was,” he said, before the start of the conflict in 2014.
As for Ukraine, “it will be rearmed and closely connected to NATO, if not part of it. The remaining issues could be left to a negotiation," the ex-diplomat said at the time. While Henry Kissinger underscored in a Bloomberg interview in 2022 that the moment for a pause in the conflict and peace talks was getting closer, he updated his stance, suggesting that the West should not discuss Crimea’s status as Russian until after the conflict is paused. It should be noted that for statements regarding Russia’s Crimea, Henry Kissinger’s name was listed on Myrotvorets, a notorious "kill list" website affiliated with the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
This May, Kissinger, who said he believed in "dialogue with Russia," was ready to fly to Moscow to participate in negotiations with the Russian president. He called, yet again, for the conflict in Ukraine to be resolved diplomatically. The desire to make Ukraine a member of NATO, in Kissinger’s opinion, was a serious mistake. However, in an interview for The Economist this May, the veteran strategist warned that the West had “armed Ukraine to a point where it will be the best-armed country and with the least strategically experienced leadership in Europe,” adding:
“So, for the safety of Europe, it is better to have Ukraine in NATO, where it cannot make national decisions on territorial claims.”
As the US and its NATO allies continuously funneled weapons to the Kiev regime, while targeting Russia with self-harming sanctions, Henry Kissinger repeatedly urged European leaders to not lose sight of Russia’s place in Europe. He also warned that the absence of Moscow in a new world order after the end of the conflict in Ukraine was unacceptable.
Dark Side of Kissinger’s Tenure
Feted as Henry Kissinger was for his shuttle diplomacy accomplishments, the man awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 also goes down in history as having earned widespread criticism and accusations of war crimes.
Secret Bombing Campaigns
Richard Nixon ran his campaign on a promise to end the US war in Vietnam, and Kissinger, as his national security adviser, came up with a plan for an end to the conflict. He proposed that North Vietnam withdraw from the South, and that the US-backed South Vietnamese government form a coalition with the communist National Liberation Front. However, Kissinger, who espoused at the time the “realpolitik” perspective of national interests, later supported Nixon’s decision to carry out a 14 month-long carpet-bombing campaign of Cambodia, launched in 1969. Cambodia was used by North Vietnamese troops for bases and supply depots. The bombing campaign was kept under wraps and was revealed by a whistleblower. The raids left an estimated 700,000 people dead, with close to 2 million displaced. It also brought to power a pro-US army general, Lon Nol, in 1970.
Orchestrated Coups
After Kissinger received the coveted post of Nixon’s new Secretary of State in 1973 - a role he retained when Nixon resigned and was replaced by Gerald Ford – he played his role in orchestrating the military overthrow of Chile’s vibrant democracy, part of a three-year effort to undermine the socialist President Salvador Allende. Driven by fears of a "well-functioning socialist experiment" taking hold in the region, Kissinger and Nixon authorized the CIA to undermine the country, bringing Chile into a crisis. Subsequently, Gen. Augusto Pinochet seized power and proceeded to kill thousands during his 20-year reign of terror. Three years later, in Argentina, Washington supported the military overthrow of the elected government of Isabel Perón.
Henry Kissinger has also been accused of throwing his weight behind what was dubbed Operation Condor. The latter was an effort by the Chilean junta and other Washington-supported right-wing dictatorships in South America to silence dissent. In Pakistan, in 1970 and 1971, Nixon and Kissinger supported President Yahya Khan in his genocidal repression of Bengali nationalists, with the conflict estimated to have killed at least thousands.
In 1975, when President Suharto of Indonesia was planning an invasion of East Timor, which was heading toward independence after being a Portuguese colony, President Gerald Ford and his then-secretary of state Kissinger met with Suharto. Ford was quoted as saying, “We will understand and will not press you on the issue,” while Kissinger added, “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly.” The result was an invasion of East Timor that caused an estimated 200,000 deaths.
Kissinger’s diplomacy has also been accused of approving the involvement of the CIA in Angola and stoking a war there, and of prolonging apartheid in South Africa.
Secret Wiretaps of Aides
While dodging the Watergate scandal, which cost Nixon his job in 1974, Kissinger, however, was tainted by the subsequent revelation that he had ordered the FBI to wiretap members of the National Security Council. Nixon and Kissinger were revealed to have directed the FBI to begin a leak investigation and wiretaps after The New York Times broke the story on the top secret bombing raids over Cambodia.
