On Henry Kissinger

As all who care are aware, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger passed away on November 29 at the age of 100.  Mr. Kissinger was appointed National Security Advisor by former President Richard Nixon in 1969, and Mr. Nixon named him U.S. Secretary of State in 1973.  To list Sec. Kissinger’s accomplishments here would be a waste of your time; in the coming days there will be a legion of sources that will describe these for those who wish a review.  I consider Mr. Kissinger to be the second finest American foreign policy mind of the last half century – behind only Mr. Nixon himself.  Mr. Kissinger was a practitioner of Realpolitik – pragmatically seeing the world as it is, and advocating for those policies designed to preserve or improve America’s position in ever-shifting global landscape.  (Perhaps I feel the way I do about Mr. Kissinger’s approach because his philosophy toward foreign policy was essentially the same as I would submit must be maintained by an able transaction lawyer – you don’t expect the perfect outcome; you manage within the variables you have to achieve the best outcome you can under the existing circumstances.)  He believed in maintaining stability – a structured world order.  Many accurately criticize him for heavily prioritizing, in deed if not in word, positions that he perceived as maintaining American strategic interests while placing significantly lesser emphasis on (if not ignoring) human rights transgressions by our less-savory allies as well as our adversaries.  I would counter that when you are the world’s preeminent super power, stability is your friend, instability your enemy.  Executing upon such a philosophy is not the most humanitarian, but is arguably the only approach that enables America – which has been and as of today remains, whatever our shortcomings, the foremost democracy and bulwark of freedom in the history of the world — to maintain its standing in a world run by ambitious, flawed and frequently malign humans.

Messrs. Nixon and Kissinger got the primary strategic foreign policy challenge of their age – which I consider to be China, not Vietnam – right.  Despite the depth of Cold War rhetoric and atmosphere, they recognized that China’s Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai had come to fear the power of the U.S.S.R. on China’s border more than they feared America – and that America could leverage this Chinese concern to tilt the balance of world power further toward the U.S. and away from the U.S.S.R.  I would submit that former President Ronald Reagan’s later direct and more bellicose approach toward the U.S.S.R., ultimately resulting in its dismantling, would not have succeeded but for the groundwork laid by Messrs. Nixon and Kissinger.  I agree with the assertion that it was Mr. Kissinger’s worldwide prestige that kept American foreign policy on an even keel as the nation went through the trauma of Watergate.  At the same time, Messrs. Nixon’s and Kissinger’s handling of the Vietnam conflict obviously remains controversial; I have heard commentators opine that they “widened the war” by bombing and ultimately invading North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia.  It is undisputed that the American bombing left devastation; untold numbers of undetonated bombs embedded in Cambodian soil continue to maim Cambodians.  (This was brought home to us over a decade ago when we visited our son, a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Cambodia.)  It is also undisputed that American troop levels in Vietnam sharply declined during every year of the Nixon presidency.

As anyone who ever heard Mr. Kissinger speak – which includes almost all of us who have lived in the western world for the last 50 years — is well aware:  this brilliant strategist was a German immigrant, whose Jewish family only came to this country in order to escape Nazi persecution.  His passing again causes one to reflect upon the intellectual capital that this country, our children and grandchildren may sorely lose out on in the future because the xenophobia now infecting so many of our citizens is resulting in the exclusion of immigrants fleeing persecution in their native lands who would, if allowed, enthusiastically enrich our nation.

About a year ago, I entered a note in these pages, entitled, “Our Most Influential American Non-Presidents Since World War II,” describing the contributions of 15 Americans from Muhammad Ali to Mark Zuckerberg (not all the characterizations were positive 😉 ).  I remember considering but ultimately excluding Mr. Kissinger from the list because I didn’t want the group to be too heavily weighted toward my interest in public policy and politics.  I ended the piece with the query, “Who did I miss?”

Now, I answer my own question:  I missed Henry Kissinger.    

May this great – certainly not perfect, but unquestionably great — American rest in peace.