Who Was Henry Kissinger?

This brings us to our first question on: who is Henry Kissinger? To begin with, Henry Kissinger was not born in the United States. Barely months before the 1938 Nazi Kristallnacht, when synagogues and Jewish businesses were burned and vandalised and Jews jailed and sent to camps in Germany and Austria, Kissinger’s family departed their Bavarian home. The teenage Heinz Alfred Kissinger arrived with his parents and younger brother to the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside, beginning to burgeon with German Jews fortunate to escape Hitler.

Thirty years later, incoming president Richard Nixon named Kissinger, a Harvard professor and author of books on European and nuclear diplomacy, to head the National Security Council, and four years after that to simultaneously serve as Secretary of State. He was the first Jew to run a department plagued with a reputation for anti-Semitism in its Ivy League and prep school ranks. In his eight years at the forefront of U.S foreign policy under Nixon and then president Gerald Ford, Kissinger became a living symbol of American diplomacy, thrusting himself into the middle of critical world events and developing policies that reshaped the post-war global landscape. Anyone of which would have made him a storied figure in the annals of American diplomacy and a source of political and historical controversy.

THE DICHOTOMIC REPUTATION AND LEGACY OF HENRY KISSINGER

And now onto the second question on: what has been the reason for Henry Kissinger’s dichotomic reputation and legacy? Well, Kissinger’s reputation and legacy has been a cause for debate for year, with the intent to ultimately decide on whether society ought to characterise him as a national hero or a villainous character. To unpack this portion of our discussion, we ought to look at some of Kissinger’s notable involvements in US foreign policy. First is the 1971-72 opening to China. This policy ended US isolation from the communist regime ruling the world’s most populous nation. Kissinger still regards the transformation the China opening created in international relations as his major legacy . He grew dismayed as China’s increasingly assertive policies moved the U.S. and other nations away from cooperation to talk of great power competition and even a New Cold War in later years.

Secondly, was the Vietnam Accords. Like the original outreach to China, the diplomacy to bring an end to the decade long U.S. war in Vietnam began in secret. A deal concluded and signed in Paris in early 1973 brought the withdrawal of American troops, from a conflict that caused 58,000 US combat deaths, left millions of Vietnamese dead and fractured American society. The accords briefly ended overt efforts by communist North Vietnam to remove the American-backed government of South Vietnam. Kissinger and his Vietnamese interlocutor were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Vietnamese negotiator turned down the honor and by spring 1975, North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops conquered the south and unified the country under Leninist rule. Arguments endure whether the same deal could have been reached early in the Nixon administration at much less human cost. But Kissinger denied assertions that the accords were but a fig leaf for the American withdrawal. He blamed Congress for ignoring a last minute request for military aid to save the South Vietnamese government.

This was one of the incidents that highlighted Henry Kissinger as a figure of contradictions. He shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiations to end the Vietnam War, but he was also accused of being a war criminal for his decisions during the conflict. However, in light of this, it is notable that when major wars end, it’s not uncommon for so-called diplomats to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, F.W. DeKlerk, the former president of South Africa, and Yasir Arafat, former chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, all won the Nobel prize, and all had tremendous amounts of blood on their hands before they made peace. Therefore, while Kissinger’s Vietnam policy was certainly disastrous – for the US and for the people of Vietnam – people shy away from the label of “war criminal” and highlight Kissinger’s Nobel Prize because it colors that portion of history in a manner that asserted victory for the US.

Third, we ought to look at the American withdrawal from all of Indochina, which had the most dreadful consequences for Cambodia, opening the last barrier to a takeover by the radical Khmer Rouge. Already destabilided by a 1970 military coup that ousted its neutralist government and by an American invasion and carpet bombing campaign engineered by Kissinger and ordered by Nixon, the country was easy prey. The four-year Khmer Rouge rule became a holocaust that killed as many as two million Cambodians or a quarter of that small nation’s nearly eight million people. In later years, Kissinger rejected criticism of the bombings in Cambodia, many of which had targeted civilian centers.

Then there was the coup in Chile. The most controversial element of Kissinger’s tenure remains the 1973 overthrow of the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, and his replacement by a military dictatorship that brought the deaths, disappearances and torture of as many as 40,000 Chileans. The direct role of Kissinger and the Central Intelligence Agency in carrying out the Chile coup remains contested but the removal of Allende and subsequent atrocities by the military regime have fueled passionate calls to label Kissinger a war criminal.

But an equally passionate debate erupted almost simultaneously, though it was confined to Washington. The Watergate era produced revelations that Kissinger had authorized wiretaps of close aides and friendly journalists as part of the Nixon administration’s obsession with plugging leaks. It was among the many controversies that rose alongside Kissinger’s own rising national and international celebrity status – a sharp contrast to the obscurity consigned to most of his predecessors and successors. From politicians on the Democratic left and Republican right, as well as scholars and pundits, Kissinger came under scrutiny, and some of those controversies endure.

HENRY KISSINGER’S INFLUENCE OF KLAUS SCHWAB

Finally we ought to then address the question of: what is the nature of Henry Kissinger’s influence on Klaus Schwab? And well, this was primarily sparked by their shared connection through Harvard, but largely was influenced by the dramatic amount of influence that Henry Kissinger had on AMerican foreign policy. Kindly have a listen.

Irrespective of where one might stand on the debate on Kisisnger’s legacy and reputation, one fact remains notable: no single individual since Kissinger has exercised such control over the sprawling apparatus of institutions, agencies and interests that create US policy. However, in the present dispensation, we see a handful of individuals and organisations attempt to do the same, and even on a global scale – and Klaus Schwab and his WEF, are certainly among those who have taken a page from Kissinger’s playbook.

Written by Lindokuhle Mabaso

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