Henry Kissinger turns 100 and no living being has more experience in international affairs than he does. From his office on the 33rd floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, he still advises heads of state, prime ministers, dictators and monarchs on world affairs and how to avoid World War III. His enemies say there is nothing to celebrate: he has only been good at recognizing the changes taking place and moving in favor of the United States, and his foreign policy model has never respected ethical values such as democracy and human rights, about which the consensus rules won by the Americans in the world. America’s innocence ended during his eight years as Richard Nixon and Henry Ford’s Secretary of State, when realpolitik trumped all other considerations.
Born to Jewish parents on May 27, 1923 in Fürth, a small town in Bavaria, Kissinger left Germany with his family in 1938 because he was unable to continue his studies. He would have liked to play football, he was good at it, but even that was not possible for a Jew. They went to London and then to America where he graduated from Harvard. He was smart, enterprising and full of ideas. He was granted citizenship at the age of twenty and as he spoke German he was drafted into the military and sent to the Ardennes. When the city of Krefeld was conquered, it was given to him to administer, and he did it very well. His native language earned him a role in counterintelligence and proximity to authorities, which comes in handy when returning from the war. He wanted to be an FBI agent, but they didn’t trust him. He began to concern himself with international affairs, writing, giving solicited and unsolicited advice. Please. He has had celebrity stories including Diane Sawyer, Candice Bergen, Shirley Maclaine and Liv Ullman. He explained that foreign policy is about legitimacy, which should not be confused with justice. Something unjust can also happen, such as the partition of Poland after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, but if the other states agree, the injustice becomes legitimate.
FRIENDSHIP WITH NIXON
He met Richard Nixons in 1967, calling him “the most dangerous man who ever ran for president.” But she soon changed her mind and helped him win the 1969 election. They found that they complemented each other: Kissinger was intelligent, international, brilliant. Nixon was the classic pragmatic American. They have one thing in common: an insatiable ambition.
Upon his appointment as foreign minister, Kissinger initiated a policy of deterrence toward Russia and a rapprochement with China aimed at creating an anti-Soviet alliance. But the Vietnam War problem still had to be solved. He cared little for this small Southeast Asian nation, but he knew that if Americans abandoned it, its allies around the world would believe they might one day suffer the same fate. To speed things up, it was Kissinger who advised bombing Cambodia, from where the enemy attacks were launched. Americans dropped more explosives on the country than were used in all of World War II, causing thousands of civilian casualties. He then negotiated with North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho to end the conflict and both received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. Le Duc Tho rejected it, Kissinger “humbly” accepted, amid thousands of controversies.
In November 1972, he gave an interview to journalist Oriana Fallaci, which he later bitterly regretted. He said the Vietnam War was “pointless” and he didn’t care about people’s judgment or approval. He felt like a cowboy from a western film “entering town alone with his horse; He doesn’t have a gun, but he acts by being in the right place at the right time.” After the interview, Nixon didn’t want to see him again for weeks. Kissinger went to his ranch to make peace, but the President had security remove him. A lone cowboy, Kissinger advocated General Videla’s seizure of power in Argentina and did not oppose the elimination of thousands of opponents of the military junta. He also backed Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile that overthrew and killed President-elect Salvador Allende. He did nothing to stop Pakistan’s 1971 massacre of Bengal in which three million people died and 400,000 women were raped. In one conversation, he called Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi a witch and a whore. In another conversation with Nixon after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, he argued that emigration of Jews from Russia was not a goal of American policy and that “if the Russians are putting the Jews in a gas chamber, that should not be the case “. “It’s not an American problem, it’s a humanitarian problem.”
Kissinger has regrets for many things he has said and done, and has often apologized. But who knows what the world would be like today if he hadn’t been there. Maybe we would have had nuclear war, maybe all of South America would have been indoctrinated by Soviet-backed Cuban communists, the USSR would still have existed, Israel would have been wiped out by an alliance of Arab states. It is likely that the hope that foreign policy can be ethical is just an illusion and that realpolitik is the only way to keep the world going. But now that he’s 100, Kissinger continues to give advice, write books, and attend conferences. He says we must stop deluding ourselves that China is westernizing and that America must have a patient dialogue with Beijing. He says that Russia will never be able to accept defeat and therefore peace with Ukraine must be sought in order to find a way to bring Moscow back into the international context. Also think that World War III has never been so close. Let’s hope it’s age, but that’s not certain.
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