Henry Kissinger remains in the public eye. It matters little that not many people are enamoured with him or even respect him in the way he thinks he should be respected. The worldwide adulation he thought would be his was something that did not come his way, largely because of his contributions to the destabilization of global politics he thought would in fact reshape the world in better form.
Despite all the dislike, sometimes revulsion he has aroused, Kissinger remains a point of reference for students and researchers of diplomatic history. His 99th birthday was observed last month, a phase in life when most men and women lose their bearings or proceed headlong into dementia or severe ailments. Many of course pass into their graves long before they can come to this late stage in life.
Kissinger has beaten the trend and has now come forth with a new work on leadership -- his assessment of six individuals he celebrates for the quality of leadership they demonstrated before their people and before the world -- he conveys the impression that he is not done with life and thinking yet. His intellectual faculties remain strong and productive.
And yet, the thought cannot be brushed aside that for all his prominence as one of the foremost analysts of diplomacy in our times, he remains notorious for everything that he ought not to have done.
History with Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, his notoriety in pushing the Nixon administration toward a pro-Pakistan tilt even as the Pakistan army was shooting Bengalis like birds in 1971 is quite justifiably remembered. He did not invent the phrase “international basket case” -- his subordinate U Alexis Johnson did -- but he was happy that it could be applied to a war-ravaged Bangladesh.
In 1971, Kissinger and Richard Nixon brazenly looked away from the genocide in Bangladesh because they needed General Yahya Khan to be the conduit to their China opening. The two men were outraged by Indira Gandhi’s support for the Bangladesh cause, indeed by her defiance of American policy in South Asia. Both men cheerfully shared expletives about the Indian prime minister behind her back. Kissinger would not demand that Pakistan release Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and put a stop to military operations in what would soon be a free Bangladesh.
In October 1974, Kissinger sought to make amends, sort of, with Bangladesh when he called on Bangabandhu in New York, where the Bangladesh leader was to speak before the United Nations General Assembly. Days later, Kissinger travelled to Dhaka, met Bangabandhu, and had talks and dinner with Bangladesh’s foreign minister Kamal Hossain.
At the official dinner by Hossain in his honour, Kissinger waxed eloquent in speaking of the Bangladesh foreign minister as having been his student in bygone times. His comments to the press, following his talks with Bangabandhu, had that certain tinge of sarcasm about them. He was yet bitter that Bangladesh had won the war in 1971.
The good, the bad, and the ugly
But, of course, none of this detracts from the superb scholarship Kissinger has demonstrated throughout his career. The scholarship of course came in league with ambition, for Kissinger always needed a place in the sun in order to be able to influence events. His early work, A World Restored, was a brilliant foray into a past defined by diplomacy establishing the balance of power in Europe.
His later works, notably White House Years, Diplomacy, Years of Renewal, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, Ending the Vietnam War, World Order and On China, bear all the hallmarks of excellent research and a mind capable of taking a sweeping view of global history.
His new book surely looks to be doing a similar thing in his twilight. His curiosity about Artificial Intelligence (AI) is indicative of the intellectual sharpness which has never dimmed since his days as a student at Harvard. Admirers and detractors alike trip over one another to be in his presence.
That is the positive side of Kissinger’s reputation.
And then comes the not so positive, beginning with the fact that early on as President Nixon’s national security advisor he usurped the role that was properly that of Secretary of State William Rogers. Kissinger and Nixon undermined Rogers every step of the way, even keeping from him the fact that in July 1971, Kissinger would be on a secret mission to Peking (Beijing today) to explore an opening by the US to China. That he was aiming for Rogers’ job was all too obvious; and he got it in 1973.
Kissinger invented the art of shuttle diplomacy in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East in 1973. His tireless trips to Cairo, Damascus, Tel Aviv, and Amman were a high point in his career, demonstrating the thrill he got from them.
He loved his work but loved it more when people were awed by him. He craved adulation. Being the centre of attention was a powerful streak in his character. He enjoyed the attention of women. When the Iranian belly dancer Nadia Parsa cavorted her way into his lap at a reception in Tehran in 1972, he was pleased. He relished the experience.
The Kissinger character has consistently been complex. Always seeking the limelight, he expected a position in the new Kennedy administration in 1961. The young president was not overly impressed and so the young Harvard academic, which Kissinger was at the time, would a few years later join Nelson Rockefeller as his foreign policy advisor.
He saw Rockefeller as a future president. Rockefeller faltered. When Nixon won the presidency in 1968, one of his earliest moves was to try poaching Kissinger from the Rockefeller camp. Kissinger accepted Nixon’s offer to be national security advisor with alacrity. He was finally in a position to shape policy and influence events.
The influence translated into the destruction of Cambodia through bombing, in the naïve belief that the raids could force the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese to capitulate to American firepower in order for South Vietnam to be saved. Kissinger concluded a peace deal with the suave, scholarly Le Duc Tho, but even as the war continued, the Nobel Committee gave the two men a joint prize for peace.
Tho spurned the offer, but Kissinger would not let go of it. It was another feather to his cap. He was in office when Saigon fell to the communists in April 1975.
Engineering the fall of the Salvador Allende government in Chile has stigmatized Kissinger. He and Nixon vowed to make the Chilean economy scream. The result was murder and mayhem in Santiago and the rise of one of the most pernicious dictatorships in modern history.
Kissinger and President Gerald Ford were in the know about General Suharto’s plans for an invasion of East Timor and would do nothing to dissuade the Indonesian dictator from his mission. It was all realpolitik for Kissinger.
Henry Kissinger has loved power, has loved exercising power. When Ford lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter in 1976, Kissinger found himself at sea. He bided his time till Ronald Reagan came along in 1980, only to be disappointed that Reagan had absolutely no desire to restore him to his old position in the State Department.
And so Kissinger, the brilliant scholar with the Machiavellian streak, has grown old. Ideas yet sparkle in him. Bent double with age, he nevertheless remains erect in his view of a world he certainly thinks he should have been allowed to refashion through grand strategy, his own.
Love him or hate him, but you cannot ignore him. The master player at the diplomatic chessboard of the second half of the 20th century refuses to call it a day in the first quarter of the 21st.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
