Kissinger Was a Courtier to Atrocity

International New York Times | 13 February 2016

Todd Gitlin is a professor of sociology and journalism at Columbia University and the author of "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage," and the forthcoming novel, "The Opposition." He is a columnist for Tablet and is on Twitter. 

Henry Kissinger rose to power as a banal, obsequious and sometimes hysterical cold warrior whose leap into the front ranks of America’s higher courtiers was launched by his advocacy of preparation for a nuclear war in central Europe — a “limited” one, in the perverse locution of the time, since in his scenario America would deploy “battlefield nuclear weapons” of 500 kilotons, or 25 Hiroshimas, each.

He cried wolf over Soviet power, was obsessed by a black-white view of the world and failed to see Communist-led insurgencies as nationalist.

Such notions passed for judiciousness in the 1950s. In those years, Kissinger went on about America’s “margin of survival” having “narrowed dangerously” to the point that “national disaster” loomed and the United States was “in "mortal danger" of a Soviet surprise attack.’” Such hysteria moved the world to within a hair’s breadth of not-so-limited war during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Repeatedly crying wolf over Soviet power, obsessed by a black-white view of the world, failing to understand that Communist-led insurgencies like Vietnam’s were crucially nationalist and anticolonial, Kissinger propelled himself simplemindedly into the heights and depths of a career as courtier-in-chief. It culminated in his partnership with Richard Nixon in steering the last six years of America’s Vietnam War — during which more than 21,000 Americans died, along with between 800,000 and 1.5 million Vietnamese. 

Under Kissinger’s guidance of an American bombing campaign kept secret from Americans, Cambodia became — according to leading Southeast Asia scholars — “one of the most heavily-bombarded countries in history.” Gravely undermined, the government of Cambodia was overthrown by the genocidal Khmer Rouge. As the by-no-means-left-wing British journalist William Shawcross wrote in noting that Kissinger found no room in his 894-page memoir, "White House Years," to consider the subsequent fate of Cambodia, “for Kissinger Cambodia was a sideshow, its people expendable in the great game of large nations.” Reviewing Shawcross’s "Sideshow" favorably, Kissinger’s former Harvard colleague and co-teacher, the late Stanley Hoffmann, wrote that “the ordeal inflicted on the Cambodian people by its rulers since April 1975 was not merely preceded but prepared by America’s own atrocious policy.” It was neither morally justifiable nor tactically astute.

What did Kissinger learn from these events? Nothing of value that he has owned up to. He supported Pakistan’s military dictatorship during the 1971 Bangladesh war, colluding in what American diplomats in Dakka considered “moral bankruptcy” in the face of “atrocities” and “a reign of terror.” In 1976, he told Chile’s murderous dictator Augosto Pinochet, in the words of his own memorandum: "My evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government that was going Communist." 

How, then, does Kissinger come by his reputation as sage? In his fifth decade, he joined Nixon in realizing that Mao’s China could be played against the Soviet Union's Brezhnev. For helping to arrange Nixon’s triumphal visit to Beijing, he deserves much credit. For the rest, his reputation for sagacity rests on courtiership twice removed: a chorus of sycophancy sounded by the great and the good. Having been demonized not only by the Vietnam-era left for war abominations but by the Reagan-era far right for arms control and U.S.-Soviet detente, his counsel might well be seen as a riposte to both, not least the cavalier carpet bombers who lead the Republican Party

A secretary of state might well want to seek — and weigh — advice from her predecessors, including shameful ones. Kissinger, after all, has met “everyone” in the course of a long career replete with second, third and nth acts. 

Politicians make “friends” with the alacrity of Facebookers. But as Secretary Clinton reflects on America’s challenges in the 21^st-century, she should think long and hard about what her advisers did to undermine American standing during the 20^th.