“After all, virtually every post-1945 American statesman could be accused of crimes against humanity ”
Except Trump

It was the wonderful Tom Lehrer who observed, ‘Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.’ Fazi appears to be at one with Niall Ferguson and his recent statement: ‘Happy centenary, Henry. It’s your world, after all. We just live in it’. Yup. Kissinger made a great deal of what was, and remains, utterly rotten about the world we now live in.

Niall Ferguson argues that napalming schoolchildren has to be weighed against the defeat of communism. I got that far.

“The strong do what they like and the weak suffer what they must.”
Kissinger gets a lot of stick, but as as Fazi suggests, his hand was one of many on the American tiller, and only for a short space of time. Kissinger’s main ‘crime’ is that he explains things that we, nice people in rich countries, would prefer to gloss over. There is nothing particularly evil about the last 30 years of American hegemony. It is, by and large, an improvement on most of history, encapsulated in the quote from Thucydides, written 2,500 years ago. The problem isn’t Kissinger, or the United States. It’s humanity.
You think Kissinger is nasty? Try looking in the mirror, mate.

The Kissinger strategy of exploiting divisions between Moscow and Beijing while strengthening relations with the Arab oil producers to undercut Moscow could be a model for how to act now. Instead, the USA is forcing Moscow and Beijing together while pushing the Arabs away. Bold strategy. We’ll see how it works out.
The commie scum that have taken power in Cuba, Venezuela, and now Nicaragua (stop romancing the Sandinista dictatorship, por favor) and Peru have shown complete willingness to use machine guns to keep themselves in power. Anyone criticizing Pinochet without acknowledging this reality is a generation out of date. (In reality, Pinochet saved his nation and Kissinger should be given credit for helping save Chile from decades of communist ruin, but we can’t say that in polite company).
Ignoring (when not effectively hiding) the enforced mass rape and genocide that the Muslim half of the Indian subcontinent underwent due to geostrategic concerns does not look so great in retrospect however. Not that he’s at fault for the event, considering it occurred just a couple decades after Indian independence. What did we all expect from that, really? Lucky they haven’t nuked each other yet.

Given post-Eisenhower American foreign policy before the influence Kissinger saw the quagmire that was Vietnam and after saw the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq, I’m prepared to accept Kissinger was possibly a small moderating influence on the industrial-military complex Eisenhower worried about. It is fair to ask critics of Kissinger to explain what he could have done differently when it is abundantly clear there is a malignancy at the heart of the American state, in an equally malignant world.

Every analysis of Kissinger’s supposed hyperinfluence uses comparisons and alternate histories, which suggests his achievements and failures were heavily influenced by other actors. Men who’ve held real supreme power don’t need comparisons and alternative histories to show that power.

The good die young.

An article that needed writing. And raises a question which really deserves some thought.
It’s hard to know if America could have done better with different policies during the Cold War. But not entirely clear that America’s policy in Latin America was really that different in the 1970s (under Kissinger) than it was in the preceding decades.
And is was those sort of policies which generated much of the legacy of anti-Americanism that remains today. Support for ugly, anti-democratic regimes, whilst ostensibly supporting democracy around the world.
But as ever with this author, some quite needless, ridiculous assertions are dropped in. So Russia is a “civilisation super-state” ? Get real, Mr Fazi.

On Ukraine Kissinger recently said only what is almost certainly being discussed privately – that an eventual ceasefire will need a NATO guarantee for Ukraine, and thus almost certain membership.
Kissinger enough of a realist to know Zelensky and Ukraine need the chance first to take back some land as they cannot ‘sell’ the current front-line as an acceptable end to this to their people who have sacrificed so much. But after the coming summer offensive where the line settles will be the ceasefire – and we have Korea 1953 mk 2.
Looking forward too to Fergusson’s sequel. He’s probably re-writing the last chapter now in light of this. Don’t agree with any hagiography about subject matter but first book was really good.

What Kissinger recognised is that the reality of the world is that there were, and are now even more, bad people out there, and no nation, however principled and decent and kindly, can survive if does not adopt ruthless responses to them.

Which is not to excuse some very bad things that were done especially in Indo-China, which have hugely damaged the USA’s reputation. Even that was an inevitable result of a necessary response, the US should have done much more to try to make amends after.

Dr. Henry Kissinger had an unparalleled career in American public service, of anybody in the 20th century. Will history absolve him for his part in controversies like the Viet Nam War, support of brutal Latin American dictators in the 70s, etc? No. But as with judging anyone else, one ought to think hard and ask what he would have done in his shoes.

Very acute perspective on the realities we now face. My understanding, though, is that Nixon and Kissinger did jointly push back very successfully against enormous forces within the US political class ranged against detente with China. What they appealed to was the public’s innate desire for peace.

The term “Realist” refers to one who reacts to a currently existing, unchangeable situation by “playing the game”. It is not applicable to the instigator of a new situation who changes it utterly through immoral, cruel and downright evil attacks on decency, morals and accepted principles..
We would not apply the term “realist” to Germany’s fascists would we? The instigators of a “new world order” based on an “ubermench” ideology is not “realism” by any stretch of the imagination.
Kissinger is nothing short of a wicked, evil antichrist, a blight on humanity, a disgusting excuse for a human being and among the worst war criminals in all of history, right up (or rather down) there with Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot..

”With his reputation largely (and questionably) untainted by Watergate, Kissinger went on to found, in 1982, his own lucrative geopolitical consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, which he continues to run. We know relatively little of the work it carries out. Several attempts have been made, at the congressional level, to get the company to hand over its secretive “client list” — but all have failed.”

He is the snake our Lizard Masters use to do their dirty deeds. I think Watergate was a CIA Coup replacing Nixon with the tame Ford. I think when you hear the name Kissinger it gives good men a shiver in their spine…..

What the ‘Kissinger Associates’ is really about….not even the completely corrupt Politicians can know – because it inevitably works at the top level, the Hideous Strength level, where the strings which make the world dance are pulled.

From the Guardian on this Odious duo…

”Ferguson trivialises his own book: well before mentioning any serious critic, he cites the conspiracy cultist David Icke, who apparently believes Kissinger is one of the human race’s reptile overlords. “No rational people take such nonsense seriously,” Ferguson writes, who nonetheless uses such nonsense to open Kissinger’s life story.”

That is because rational people not only take our Psychopathic Lizard Overlords seriously – but know 100% it is true (even if as a metaphor – only they are so evil – I think they really must be 5th dimensional alien projections into our dimension as Icke, and even Hunter S. Thompson, describe. Or Demonic.) . And now they bring us AI.