Henry Kissinger: powerful man and hypocrite Henry Kissinger: powerful man and hypocrite

One of Henry Kissinger’s most famous quotes is: “Power is the best aphrodisiac.” It perfectly sums up the nature of the former US Secretary of State and security politician. Kissinger was the embodiment of a politics in which noble ideas are fleeting and real power is permanent. You can call this realpolitik – or pure cynicism.

Be that as it may, all morality aside, everyone agrees: Kissinger was probably the most important statesman of the postwar period. He was not president of the US. He could never have been, as he was born in Germany and his Jewish family fled the Nazis. His English therefore had a strong German accent until the end of his life.

For a time, Kissinger was shadow president

For a time, however, Kissinger served simultaneously as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. This gave him a unique amount of power, and when Richard Nixon was in trouble because of the Watergate affair, he was also a kind of shadow president of the US.

There is no doubt that Kissinger had a brilliant mind, but in his personal dealings he was anything but easy. He was considered vain and short-tempered. It is said that he threw books around during his frequent tantrums. He also manipulated even his closest employees. In his 1992 biography, Walter Isaacson describes him as a conman: “He knew how to bring people together in conspiratorial alliances and exploit their mutual animosity to his advantage.”

Without Richard Nixon, Kissinger would never have become what he eventually became. The two made an odd couple. Here the down-to-earth, practical Nixon, there the cerebral Harvard professor. But the connection worked because the two shared an unbridled desire for power. Kissinger once put it this way: “We deal with what is illegal immediately, what is unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

Kissinger’s great role model was Prince Klemens von Metternich. He dedicated his dissertation to him. As a whisperer at the imperial court in Vienna, Metternich played a key role in shaping post-Napoleon policy in the 19th century and, like the American Secretary of State, was a master at playing off different interest groups against each other.

Kissinger, however, had little to gain from institutions such as the UN. He relied on “shuttle diplomacy,” which involved flying around the world almost non-stop and speaking privately with respective statesmen. This allowed him to utilize his greatest strength. Isaacson again: “He was almost compulsively drawn to his opponents. He sought their approval through flattery and by pitting them against each other.”

Kissinger’s major achievements include:

He negotiated peace in the Vietnam War. As a result, he and the North Vietnamese Foreign Minister received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. This award was a mockery and the Stockholm Committee’s greatest misstep. Previously, Nixon and Kissinger had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than the Allies had dropped on Germany in World War II.

Kissinger also reached an agreement with the Soviet Union on limiting nuclear weapons. He can also consider his role as a mediator in the Middle East to be successful. His most important act, however, was the rapprochement between the US and China. The foreign minister managed to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow and slowly open China to the Western economy.

One of them was a certain Deng Xiaoping, who would later turn Mao Zedong’s catastrophic economic policies inside out and thus initiate China’s economic miracle. However, given the current rivalry between the two superpowers, Kissinger’s reconciliation with Beijing is viewed with mixed feelings in Washington today.

Kissinger committed his worst crime in Chile. In 1973, he had a hand when a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet assassinated democratically elected President Salvador Allende in a coup, plunging the country into a brutal dictatorship for decades. Kissinger didn’t care. “The matter is far too important to be left to the voters of Chile,” he said coolly, commenting on the bloody events in South America.

Kissinger also did not play a creditable role when the Pakistani army bombed Bangladesh in 1971 and Indonesian soldiers invaded East Timor.

After Nixon had to resign due to the Watergate affair, Kissinger initially served under his successor Gerald Ford, but the moral Jimmy Carter wanted nothing to do with the cynical Kissinger. The former Secretary of State therefore left Washington and founded his own consultancy firm in New York. As a result, he wrote a slew of books and was paid handsomely for speeches and other appearances.

He also did not shy away from dubious obligations. For example, he was elected to the supervisory board of the Canadian publisher Conrad Black. He was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for fraud in 2007. Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to eleven and a half years in prison in 2022. With her company Theranos she had fooled half the world for a while and lured the elderly Kissinger onto its board of directors.

What is the verdict today on Kissinger’s realpolitik? Pretty bad. His cynical realpolitik has undermined US credibility and contributed to US geopolitics now being perceived as hypocritical, especially in the South. Ben Rhodes, national security adviser under Barack Obama, summarizes it as follows in an op-ed in the New York Times:

‘Today history is catching up with us. Around the world we are seeing the resurgence of autocracies and ethno-nationalism, most pronounced in Russia’s war against Ukraine. (…) Cynicism can lead to these results. There are no longer higher ambitions, no story that gives meaning to our actions. Politics has become a zero-sum game. In this world, only power rules.”