Henry Kissinger has had a more significant and long-lasting influence on US foreign policy than any other individual in the last fifty years.
For some, this has made him a hero and a reliable advisor; for others, it has made him a belligerent villain.
Kissinger’s foreign policy elevated the pragmatic, if politics is the art of the achievable. It was a dispassionate calculation that prioritised national interest and power over sentiment, philosophy, dogma, and, some would argue, moral precepts.
Serving as an advisor to both Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger’s style of diplomacy achieved significant achievements, such as restoring US-China relations and employing détente to stabilise the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Additionally, it opened the door for horrifyingly widespread violations of human rights, including the indiscriminate bombing of Southeast Asian countries, the overthrow of democratically elected socialist governments, and the support of brutal pro-American tyrants all over the world.
Kissinger described “grey areas” in the world outside of America’s closest allies in an essay published in 1955. Kissinger’s life was spent in a grey area where good and evil, light and dark, and war and peace all mingled into a blur.
Whether you like it or not, this is how the world operates, according to Kissinger and other foreign policy realists. To which their detractors would reply, this is the world that individuals such as Kissinger brought about.
On May 27, 1923, Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Bavaria into a middle-class Jewish family.
The family joined the German-Jewish community in New York in 1938, although they left it late to escape the persecution of the Nazis.
In high school, he was drafted into the military and sent to the army, where military intelligence used his intelligence and linguistic skills.
When he was twenty-three, he was assigned a squad to find former Gestapo agents and was granted complete authority to apprehend and hold people.
At Harvard University in the US, he studied political science.
His 1957 book Nuclear War and Foreign Policy, which favoured the sparing use of atomic weapons, helped him become well-known.
In 1968, at the height of the Cold War, Kissinger was appointed National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon.
Nixon’s momentous journey to China in 1972 was made possible by Kissinger’s détente doctrine, which was French for improved relations and helped to reduce tensions between the US and China.
Along with Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam, he later mediated the US military’s withdrawal from South Vietnam, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
To put it mildly, his efforts there were contentious. Nixon’s bombing strikes on neutral Cambodia were endorsed by him. Tens of thousands of civilians died as a result of the policy.
His diplomatic acumen played a pivotal role in mediating a truce that ended the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict.
Kissinger’s Realpolitik approach quickly gained him notoriety.
The CIA conducted clandestine activities in Chile following the election of Marxist Salvador Allende in an effort to undermine the newly elected administration and safeguard US interests. The committee that approved the measure was presided over by Kissinger.
Furthermore, Kissinger would eventually face legal action from several tribunals looking into violations of human rights and foreign national killings during the military dictatorship.
Consistently powerful, he provided Donald Trump with foreign policy briefings following his election in 2017, proposing, among other things, that Crimea be accepted as part of Vladimir Putin’s occupation.
He continued to defend the way of life in his adopted country and pursue US interests without hesitation, much to the ire of many.
“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy,” he once stated, “will achieve neither perfection nor security.”
