Henry Kissinger died yesterday at the age of 100. As historian Margaret MacMillan explains in her book Nixon and MaoKissinger shared the same obsession as Richard Nixon: He wanted to change the course of history. Unfortunately for the United States, both of these men succeeded.
Kissinger was a realist. He never cared about moral considerations.
A great seducer of the media, people who knew him personally reported that he gave two speeches. One for the general public, reassuring, almost superficial, and another for the initiated, cynics and always ready to defend the interests of the wealthy American business elites. Kissinger was also the protégé of Nelson Rockefeller, who recognized his great talents.
Kissinger was admired for his diplomacy in the Middle East and praised for his policy of detente with the USSR. But he was also hated by many because of his disastrous and bloodthirsty policies in Vietnam or his role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende.
However, his greatest achievement remains the rapprochement between Mao Zedong’s China and the United States in 1972, when he was Nixon’s Secretary of State.
Consequences of rapprochement with China
Nixon and Kissinger believed that a Sino-American rapprochement would force the Soviets to further upgrade their border with China. In fact, that’s exactly what will happen. This military effort, at enormous cost, will contribute to the downfall of the USSR.
But rapprochement with China will come at a high price, one that has become increasingly clear as the years go by. Since 1972, the United States has carried out large-scale technology transfers to China in all areas, including the military industry. They opened their market to Chinese products. They opened China.
However, China was doing very badly in the 1970s. The population grew rapidly while industrial and agricultural production declined. Without U.S. help, China’s communist regime would likely have collapsed.
Build an even more formidable opponent
Here lies the whole paradox of Kissinger’s diplomacy. By attempting to destroy the USSR, he ultimately helped create an even more dangerous enemy: China.
To the end of his life, Kissinger refused to acknowledge that he was one of the main architects of China’s strengthening vis-à-vis the United States. Oddly enough, while he was obsessed with the Russian communist threat, the Chinese communist threat never really bothered him.
Shortly before his death he even visited China one last time.
Kissinger and Nixon succeeded in changing the course of history. But not in the way they would have liked.
Today’s world, whose core is the rivalry between China and the United States, is in large part the result of Kissinger’s haphazard diplomacy.
