A Verdict on Henry Kissinger’s Verdict: The Monster Escapes Again
In remarkable speed, the editors of “Jacobin” released a slim post-death volume on Kissinger’s legacy just in time for the holiday season but fails to fully examine his many atrocities.
My favorite Kissinger story was found accidentally while I was researching for my thesis on Disney.
Kundun, a Martin Scorsese movie about the Dalai Lama during the Chinese invasion of Tibet, was produced by Touchstone (a Disney company) and distributed by Disney on Christmas in 1997. China’s massive cinemagoing audience was a lucrative new opportunity for American film distribution, but that wasn’t what Disney was wholly angling towards. They planned to build a Disneyland in China, which would be aided by domestic film exhibitions and start the cyclical and cynical Disneyfication of Chinese society—multi-generational desire of toys and theme park visits created through motion pictures. But the problem with Kundun is that the Chinese are violent baddies. To help “open” China up to Disney consumption, Disney CEO Michael Eisner employed the services of Kissinger Associates, Inc., founded and ran by Henry Kissinger in 1982. Like with Nixon two decades prior, Kissinger used his connections within the Chinese government to open them up for business, this time to convince the Chinese that Disney means business and will do something about Kundun.
After paying Kissinger Associates their two-hundred-thousand USD retainer and one-hundred-thousand USD per month special services fee, China warmed back up to Disney after Kissinger made several calls. Soon thereafter, Eisner publicly apologized for funding and distributing Kundun, which led directly to a reduced box office, and Disney got their Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005. (A not dissimilar groveling was used by Eisner’s successor, Robert Iger, to get their Shanghai Disneyland a decade later.) But like Disney’s current appeal to Chinese moviegoers, Kissinger is dead.
Reviewed:
The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger
Edited by René Rojas, Bhaskar Sunkara, and Jonah Walters
Verso, 176 pp., 2 Jan. 2024
Stating the former statesman’s death is how this lean collection of essays on Kissinger begins. In their bid to be the first book post-Kissinger death on the market, the writers in and around “Jacobin” wrote their bits obit style, perhaps years ago, waiting for the guy to go. And in that haste to be the first—only thirty-four days between death and first-print release—the editors and writers traded informative analysis for expediency. While this wouldn’t be a problem for general public readers finding this on Penguin Random House nonfiction displays, I suspect the information contained within The Good Die Young about Kissinger is fairly standard knowledge to the “Jacobin” reader. Maybe they were aiming for this sub-two-hundred page book to be the perfect Leftist stocking stuffer and Kissinger kicking the can was the best possible marketing. I kid, kinda.
The preface, written by the three editors of the book, lays out Kissinger’s legacy and thesis for the book:
But in the United States, Kissinger was untouchable. There, one of the twentieth century’s most prolific butchers died as he lived—beloved by the rich and powerful, regardless of their partisan affiliation. The reason for Kissinger’s bipartisan appeal is straightforward: he was a top strategist of America’s empire of capital at a critical moment in that empire’s development.
Kissinger was both a high society figure and bipartisan king, power for power’s sake across the board. He allowed American capital to flow across the globe to the benefit of all in charge, and especially for all the politicians-cum-lobbyists/chairpeople. The editors want to make it apparent though that Kissinger’s modus operandi was “less about promoting the profits of American corporations and more about securing healthy conditions for capital writ large,” which is an important distinction to make for the ever-scrutinizing and unfortunately never-coalescing Leftist groups. Therefore, the thesis of the book is the critique of US policies via Kissinger, who embodied the postwar regimes more fully than anyone else, even after leaving government.
Specificity and analysis is important for a figure as controversial as Kissinger is/was. I found The Good Die Young lacking much of the information needed to create a “verdict,” which was the trap other writers on Kissinger neatly avoided. (Most notably Christopher Hitchens’s The Trial of Henry Kissinger, who takes a journalistic X-Acto knife’s edge to Kissinger’s legacy to create several arguments that a war crime’s prosecution could conceivably use.) While this collection isn’t bad or wrong, it’s just too scatterbrained for any thorough argument against Kissinger—eighteen writers for 157 pages of text, including many blank pages between chapters, isn’t a good ratio for a book on history/politics/ideology. The book contains a preface, introduction and fourteen chapters divided into three groups (Americas, Europe, and Middle East and Africa), with each of those chapters written by a contributor explaining the how Kissinger influenced that country/region. But because each of those chapters are less than ten pages, a lot of information is expedited. (For instance, the book lacks any contextualization of the times Kissinger was most powerful, the mid-nineteen-seventies, which was an extremely dynamic time for US domestic and global policy.) It would have been preferable if there were half as many chapters with twice as much context explaining in detail how Kissinger fucked those places.
The introduction, written by Greg Grandin, provides an overview of Kissinger’s intellectual beginnings as a Harvard student and author of an unnecessarily long undergrad thesis (four-hundred pages). This came after Kissinger was drafted into the US Army, which sent him to work intelligence in his native-born Germany. After already fleeing Nazi rule in 1938 and having a dozen family members killed in the camps, Kissinger learned truth from fact via hard power itself. This distinction between truth and fact, as well as his commitment to political science philosophy through Bismarck, formed Kissinger’s realpolitik. This meant a propensity against technique away from purpose, which he argued would lead men to become victims of their own complexities. He was against historical determinism and decay of civilizations, that power could pivot at a moment’s notice. Facts and bureaucracy were paralyzing forces while war and diplomacy are synonymous concepts. This is why Obama couldn’t do anything while Trump was the perfect embodiment of power for power’s sake.
Grandin’s overview provides a solid history of Kissinger’s often-neglected early intellectual history connected to how he then operated in power, when theory hits practice:
It seemed a perfect expression of American militarism’s merry-go-round logic: Kissinger invokes today’s endless, open-ended war to justify what he did in Cambodia, Chile and elsewhere nearly half a century ago, even as what he did half a century ago helped create the conditions for today’s endless wars.
And:
Kissingerism is a perpetual motion machine: the purpose of American power is to create an awareness of American purpose. Put in Spenglerian terms, power is history’s starting and ending point, history’s “manifestation” and its “exclusive objective.” And since Kissinger held to an extremely plastic notion of reality, other intangible concepts such as “interests,” “values,” “tradition,” and “imagination” were also pulled into the whirlpool of his reasoning: we can’t defend our interests until we know what our interests are, and we can’t know what our interests are until we defend them. We can’t be motivated to act on our values unless we know what our values are, but we can’t know what our values are until we act.
This is the cyclical illogic of power for power’s sake. Like the thesis set out in the preface, this introduction shows a fusion of Kissinger = American power in practice.
In the following fourteen chapters, the attempt is then made to connect how Kissinger influenced decisions, while in power, as the logical extension on how US policies are made in general. The biggest problem, besides the brevity, is that each essay focuses too much on US policy and not enough on Kissinger. While it’s generally agreed upon that Kissinger between 1969 and 1977 had a massive influence on US power, it would be unfair and slightly anachronistic to attribute US hegemony at large to Kissinger, no matter how big one person’s ego/influence on it was. While I’m sympathetic to the arguments contained within, there are too many generalizations and holes in the arguments that can be exploited by the many and powerful pro-Kissingers.
I summarized each of the chapters below, specifically focusing on Kissinger’s direct influence on the country/region. (I omitted the first chapter, “Kissinger and the South American Revolutions,” which is too general and doesn’t reach a verdict, as well as the final chapter, “From the War Room to Wall Street,” which is about his consultancy work and not about foreign policy to one area.)
Chile: under Kissinger’s direction, the US pumped money into the 1970 election against Allende, then bought off legislators to vote against Allende’s inauguration, and then tried instigating a coup during the inauguration, which failed. After waiting for Allende to lose popular support and a financial blockade that stalled their economy, Kissinger exploited internal opposition groups, which led to Pinochet’s US-supported coup.
Argentina: Kissinger supported the post-Perón military junta as part of Operation Condor. This support of military rule against democratically elected movements was a direct result of conditions in Latin America created under the machinations of Kissinger.
Central America: Central America wasn’t a security threat to the US but did pose a problem in challenging US hegemony in the region. Aid increased sharply after Kissinger became chair of a bipartisan committee on Central America, which urged Reagan to fund right-wing militant groups in the region.
Cyprus: Kissinger supported the Greek dictatorship invasion of Cyprus, which set off a Turkish invasion as well, splitting the island into two, ethnically, as it remains today.
Angola: Most US officials didn’t see Angola as a problem, except Kissinger. Vietnam was ending and Kissinger wanted to boost US prestige and his own reputation (as was the case for almost all post-1973 foreign policy decisions). Kissinger gave the green-light for South Africa to invade Angola via Namibia when it was apparent that the Leftist liberation group was going to take power after Portugal’s colonial departure. Cuba then sent their own troops, which whipped the South Africans and stayed behind to support other anti-apartheid groups throughout southern Africa.
South Africa: continues where the Angola chapter ends. Kissinger was more concerned with the right-wing flank of the GOP during the 1976 election calling for his resignation than what was happening in South Africa. Nonetheless, he supported mercenary groups against regional liberation and for the apartheid government.
Western Sahara: Kissinger supported Morocco’s invasion of Western Sahara when they tried forming an independent state after Spain pulled out. One-hundred thousand Saharawis (the native ethnic group to the region) are still living in Algerian refugee camps along with diaspora communities in Spain and Mauritania.
The Gulf: Kissinger gave green light to the CIA with the help of Israel and the Shah of Iran to back the Iraqi Kurds against the Iraqi government. This was kept secret from the State Department, Kissinger’s eyes only. He purposefully didn’t provide enough arms for the Kurds to succeed, then abandoned them after Iraq and Iran signed an agreement in 1975. Iraq then crushed the Kurdish rebels, which resulted in thousands of casualties and two-hundred thousand refugees. Kissinger wanted to warm relations with Saddam Hussein after the Kurds were taken care of. (The same thing happened in 1961 and again for over fifty years: support Kurds until Iraqi government was favorable to US interests, then ally with Iraqis and let them kill the Kurds.)
East Pakistan/Bangladesh: Kissinger allowed West Pakistan, an ally, to attack East Pakistan’s independence movement. Gave them weapons against the wishes and legality posed by the State Department and CIA and urged West Pakistan not to accept a ceasefire. Pakistan importantly gave Kissinger a channel into China to create a splashy diplomatic win for Nixon.
East Timor: Kissinger gave Indonesia the green light to invade East Timor after gaining independence from Portugal, which led to the death of two-hundred thousand people, a third of their population, only hours after meeting with Indonesian dictator General Suharto in Jakarta along with President Ford. This slaughter wouldn’t have been possible without US arms and continuing aid.
Cambodia: Kissinger administered the bombing campaign that killed between fifty and one-hundred and fifty thousand civilians and instigated the Khmer Rouge several years later. Kissinger personally selected civilian village targets, required false post-strike reports, and ordered carpet bombing against “anything that flies or anything that moves.” He then supported Pol Pot after gaining power in conjunction with China against the Soviets and Vietnamese. Mostly done to save face after the loss in Vietnam.
Vietnam and China: Kissinger wanted to extend the war against the political priorities of Nixon and other officials. Pushed for heavier campaigns as troops were being pulled out to try for a last minute win, which doubled the amount of people killed after taking office.
After Kissinger left office following Carter’s win in 1976, he set up Kissinger Associates five years later, which focused on international risk consultation. He was chiefly a “commentator and a confidant to those in power.” His experience as facilitator between US hegemony and global capital allowed him to literally continue business as usual. All the biggest US businesses had retainers for his services, and he had global leaders on speed dial, which is why Disney asked him to create a channel to smooth relations. He greatly excelled in advising neoliberal programs across the world during their rise and rise: “In bringing together sellers and buyers, markets and investors, autocrats and capitalists, Kissinger played an outsized role in the rapid advancement of neoliberalism around the world.” Kissinger and US interests fully enmeshed into one unit.
It’ll be interesting to see how Kissinger’s legacy post-death will play out, which greatly depends on who’s in charge where. It will be important to cover a figure this important in exhaustive detail, which can start with The Good Die Young but must be followed up elsewhere (but preferably not Walter Isaacson, his official biographer and friend of figures in high places).
Maybe it doesn’t matter who is where though, as the US appears to be on hegemonic autopilot that fails to bend to the whims of one individual:
The Kissinger doctrine persists today: if sovereign countries refuse to be worked into broader US schemes, the American national security state will move swiftly to undercut their sovereignty. This is business as usual for the American empire, no matter which party’s avatar sits in the White House—and Kissinger, while he lived, was among the chief stewards of this status quo.
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