Henry Kissinger: A bunch of mixed feelings

Kissinger, an avid student of history before becoming a practitioner of it, did not care to notice the sufferings of the people of Bangladesh in 1971. Photo: Collected

In these past few years I have been writing rather extensively on Henry Kissinger. Only recently, when his 100th birthday was observed, I marvelled at the way he kept his focus on global affairs. Unlike so many other men of his age, men in the realm of public affairs, Kissinger was remarkably alert to the world around him.

That he was an impressive figure in foreign policy --- it would not be wise to describe him as a statesman because of all the sins he committed in his years at the helm of American diplomacy --- was periodically revealed by his ceaseless scholarship. I do not think there has been any book of Kissinger's that I have not read. Beginning with A World Restored and White House Years and ending with Leadership, I have read them all.

Am I a fan of Henry Kissinger? Far from it, for what he did to the world, to countries and nations he considered dispensable in his years in power will forever be a stain on his record. It was with the purpose of analysing and constantly researching Kissinger that I have always taken an abiding interest in him. He was a young Jewish boy in Germany as war clouds began to gather in the 1930s but soon found himself, with his parents, in the United States. Had he stayed on in Hitler's Germany, there is little guarantee that he would have survived the Holocaust, a dark period in human history which took the lives of many of Kissinger's relatives.

And here's the point: Kissinger, an avid student of history before becoming a practitioner of it, did not care to notice the sufferings of the people of Bangladesh in 1971. His secret trip to China, per courtesy of Yahya Khan, was more important to him than any expression of sympathy for the Bengalis or any statement of abhorrence at the genocide the Pakistan army was carrying on in a land that would soon be independent.

Kissinger knew, as we all did --- and do --- about the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis. But that memory did not come in the way of what he regarded as realism in foreign policy. When he, in tandem with Richard Nixon, went out on a limb to have Salvador Allende, Chile's elected President, violently overthrown by General Pinochet, I was disturbed, as were millions around the world. Here was Kissinger, in defiance of the laws of morality, doing all he could to help raise to power yet another murderous army, this one in Latin America.

No, I am not a fan of Henry Kissinger. But as is the habit of one who takes a keen interest in history, in its various manifestations, I have watched the many ways in which Kissinger stamped his authority on the world. Morals were not his cup of tea, as his swift acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973 showed. Contrastingly, Le Duc Tho, the joint winner with him of the prize, declined to accept the honour because he believed peace had not yet come to Vietnam. Tho was the statesman in the picture; Kissinger was not. He was too happy being in the limelight in a new way.

But, yes, it has been Kissinger's books --- on China, on nuclear weapons and foreign policy, on his reflections on world leaders --- which have impressed me. His interviews in the media, especially television, have been an articulate exposition of the world as he saw it. He was a diplomat, though a lapsed one, most sought after by journalists in the West. And yet Kissinger, for all the adulation directed at him, was in his final years a prisoner of circumstances. I recall the moment decades ago when he, warned upon checking into a hotel in Paris that a warrant of arrest was on its way to him from Judge Baltasar Garson, quickly took the next flight back to the United States.

How do I, indeed how do many of us, look at Kissinger now that he is dead? There is a simple enough response to the question: Kissinger never expressed any remorse for the thousands of people who perished, at the hands of the brutality of power and on the basis of his policies, around the world. The Nixon-Kissinger misguided and misconceived plan of trying to end the Vietnam War by expanding the conflict into Cambodia in the expectation that the arms route for the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong would be destroyed and leave the communists without any weapons ended in tragedy for Cambodians. No fewer than 50,000 Cambodians lost their lives. Kissinger never said sorry. The Cambodian adventure paved the path for the Khmer Rouge to seize the country. Kissinger was still in office when Phnom Penh fell to the communists.

So here was Kissinger the scholar and voice of US diplomacy engaging in acts that were patently criminal. Individuals and groups wedded to the concept of human rights --- and Kissinger was critical of Jimmy Carter's emphasis on human rights in foreign policy in his administration --- have been consistent in considering Kissinger as a war criminal. They have not been wrong.

In death, Henry Kissinger will certainly not be forgotten. In his early days as a foreign policy analyst, he brought such world figures as Metternich and Talleyrand to the centre of historical studies. I am quite convinced that, with the numerous books having already been written on Kissinger, there will be many more in the years that will follow his demise.

Let Kissinger rest in peace, even if it was the peace of the grave that his policies engendered in Bangladesh, Chile, Cambodia and elsewhere around the world.

Sketch: TBS

Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics and diplomacy

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.