Consider This from NPR - The Legacy of Henry Kissinger

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was viewed as brilliant by some and a war criminal by others. The only man to ever hold the jobs of National Security Advisor and Secretary of State at the same time died at his Connecticut home at the age of 100. NPR's Ailsa Chang talks to author and historian Jeremi Suri about Kissinger's complicated legacy.Listen to Throughline's deeper dive on Kissinger here.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Not long after former President Trump took office, he took part in what's become something of a White House tradition, a visit with Henry Kissinger. Usually I say, have you ever been in the Oval Office? And with Henry Kissinger, I didn't bother asking that question because he has been in this office many, many times. It's just one measure of Kissinger's enduring influence. Ever since serving as Richard Nixon's national security advisor and secretary of state, Kissinger had met with every U.S. president but Biden. After news of his death came out Wednesday, tributes poured in, from President George W. Bush, who called him one of America's most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs, to current Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Secretary Kissinger really set the standard for everyone who followed in this job. Few people were better students of history. Even fewer people did more to shape history than Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger's admirers frame him as a clear-eyed diplomatic mastermind, the man who engineered the U.S. exit from the disastrous war in Vietnam, who brokered the first major nuclear arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, and who thawed relations with communist China. But Kissinger's critics, well, they point to another legacy. In point of fact, many, many, many thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of people, good people, people better than this man, people better than his boss, were put to death to save those faces. That is journalist Christopher Hitchens back in 2001, arguing that Henry Kissinger's career amounted to, quote,

a one-man international rolling crime wave. There was the carpet bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War and the decision to stand by while a U.S.-backed Pakistani military carried out atrocities. Also, there was Kissinger's role in fomenting a coup against a democratically elected president in Chile. Kissinger never really expressed any remorse for the atrocities that the U.S. was backing under his tenure. Peter Kornbluh has combed through declassified documents

about that episode, and he calls it a dark stain on Kissinger's reputation. Years from now, when the compliments that have been paid to him at this time have faded in memory, the verdict of history will still be there. Consider this. Henry Kissinger orchestrated a foreign policy that promoted U.S. interests and maintained global stability, even when that meant undermining democracies or killing civilians.

From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Thursday, November 30th. It's Consider This from NPR. You can get a sense of the two versions of Henry Kissinger's legacy by just reading the headlines. This one in the National Review, Henry Kissinger, legendary diplomat, dies at 100. Or this one in Rolling Stone, Henry Kissinger, war criminal, beloved by America's ruling class, finally dies. Jeremy Suri has spent a lot of time considering all of these dimensions of Kissinger. He's a professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas at Austin, and he's the author of Henry Kissinger and the American Century.

Let me ask you, what Kissinger viewed as his successes in the Cold War, like the thawing of relations between the U.S. and China, policy in Vietnam, much of that was predicated on a certain pragmatism that Kissinger operated on. Can you explain what that pragmatism was? Yes. Henry Kissinger frequently referred to what he called the national interest. His belief was that the United States and its foreign policy leaders should place the national interest above all other things, above ideology, even above morality at times. And so his pragmatism was an ironclad commitment to doing whatever it took to help the United States national interest, to make the United States more secure, to open markets for the United States, to make the United States more prosperous, and most of all, to combat American enemies in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Right. And what were the costs of this way of thinking, that America's interests were first and foremost?

Can you walk us through a couple examples of how Kissinger's diplomatic goals meant that certain people in certain regions of the world paid a price. Yes, I think it's first of all important to say that your view of Kissinger probably varies based on where you live. So if you are a citizen of Europe, particularly Germany, there are a lot of positive things he did. But as you imply in your question, if you're a citizen of some other regions of the world, you see things very differently. One example would, of course, be Chile, where the Nixon-Kissinger administration in the 1970s comes to the conclusion that a popularly elected left-leaning government is too close to our enemy, Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union, and that therefore the United States will undertake to undermine that government in sponsoring a coup,

in fact. That coup will lead to more than 10 years of repressive authoritarian governance in Chile and in the entire region. And what about Bangladesh? The U.S. supplied weapons to Pakistan while its military was engaged in mass killings in what is now Bangladesh, right? Yes, this is true. So during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, the United States basically fueled the fires of conflict and used its influence to, in many ways, separate Bangladesh from Pakistan. It had been eastern Pakistan. It became its own country. And that led to tens of thousands of deaths. And as historians have shown, the Kissinger team knew about this at the time. But Kissinger's view very firmly was that this was in the interest of the United States. And so one of the sacrifices we see in Bangladesh and in Chile is that American moral beliefs and maybe even our sense of justice is often sacrificed for the purpose of national

interest in Kissinger's system. Well, some have said that it is impossible to evaluate Kissinger the diplomat without understanding Kissinger the man, that you need to take into account his own personal experience as a refugee from Nazi Germany. How might you connect his personal past with his foreign policy thinking? Well, I'm glad you asked that question because it's something I spent a lot of time writing about in particular. I think you can never separate the individual from their experiences, especially their early experiences. And we don't have to get all Freudian to believe that early experiences shape a worldview. Henry Kissinger comes of age

in the shadow of the Holocaust. He comes of age at a time of war, and he's forced to be a refugee and then make his way in a new society. He takes away some central lessons that he never loses. These become assumptions of life, that democracies without strong leadership are dangerous. That's what he saw in Weimar, Germany, that the United States must be engaged in the world. Isolationism allowed Nazism to fester in Europe. So the United States has to be engaged in the world, Kissinger believed, using its power. And I think he came to fear throughout his life what an absence of power would mean for him and for people like him. And so to the very last days of his life, this was a man who craved power, who was obsessed with being connected and mattering. There's no

retirement for you if you fear that retirement means death and destruction. Well, how had Kissinger during his lifetime responded to the criticisms that his goal of making America's interests first and foremost sometimes came at the expense of morality and justice? I would argue he did not respond adequately, but he did respond to them. He made a number of arguments. One, that you cannot have morality and justice without order and stability and without functioning nation states with their national interests firmly intact. He also argued that the United States was the best vehicle in the long run for bringing morality and justice to the world, certainly better than the alternatives, the Soviet Union, Communist China,

whatever alternative you might put up. And then finally, he made the argument that if the United States didn't act, that even our questionable moral decisions would look even worse if they were left to someone else. So the lesser evils argument was often made by him. But it is fair to say that when I directly asked him this, he didn't have a clear answer as to what his moral worldview is and how that was compatible with the realities of his decision making. I want to ask you about the headline I read earlier on Rolling Stone's obituary for Kissinger.

Henry Kissinger, war criminal, beloved by America's ruling class, finally dies. What do you think? Was Henry Kissinger a war criminal? This is such a difficult question to answer. And I'm asked this question all the time. And I always feel like it's hard to give a satisfying answer. There were many things he did, including the support for violence in Bangladesh that we discussed, the bombing of Cambodia. There's so many things he did in the attacks on innocent civilians, in the dishonesty with which these actions were conducted that would qualify, I think, as possible war crimes. The difficulty I have in calling him a war criminal is that if one is to do that, that would make almost every American policymaker at his level a war criminal

because many of the things he did, others did, perhaps in lesser degree. But, for example, think of all the presidents who were involved at one point or another in using American air power to bomb civilian areas. Think of all the collateral damage. Think of the multiple times different presidents have been not exactly honest with the American public about foreign policy considerations. So I think it's fair to say that Kissinger committed actions that might be war crimes, but I'm just uncomfortable putting all American policymakers, which we have to do if we did this for him, in the category of war criminals. Well, given all that's going on in the world right now, like the war in Ukraine,

the war between Hamas and Israel, increased tensions with China, perhaps an emerging Cold War with Russia, how much does all of that either validate or refute Kissinger's strategies? I think this is the most important question, and it's so important for us to use this marker at the end of his life to reflect on this, because it matters so much, and it's why I study history. We have to learn from the past, Elsa. I believe that Kissinger's career shows us, first of all, that American power is necessary in the past, Elsa. I believe that Kissinger's career shows us, first of all, that American power is necessary in the world. It doesn't mean that we're the most important country in all cases. It doesn't mean we're always right. But it's hard to think

about the problems in the world as we see them today or throughout Kissinger's life, and imagine that they would be better if the United States were isolationist, if the United States didn't participate, didn't use its power and wealth to try to make a difference. I think we absolutely have to be involved in what's happening in Ukraine. We absolutely need to be involved in the Middle East. It won't be better if we just try to go home and leave it to everyone else. That said, I think Kissinger's career also shows us that when using power, we have to perhaps be even more careful, even more discerning, and make sure we're bringing in even more voices than he did. The challenge of his policymaking was that it was very centered on a few people and a few countries that he valued most. And that led to many of the bad decisions that we've talked about

in Chile, Bangladesh, Vietnam, East Timor, and the list goes on and on. Cambodia. These are places he knew little about, places he often cared little about. We shouldn't take his failures to mean that we should stay uninvolved, just the opposite. We need to be involved, but we need to be involved with our power in a more open way, open to the perspectives of more societies, more disciplined in how we use our power, and more discerning. And I think Kissinger's legacy should guide us in Ukraine and the Middle East today. We need to take those strictures in mind as we go forward and try to bring these conflicts to some kind of resolution. Jeremy Suri, he's Professor of Public Affairs and History at

the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. Thank you. And you can hear more from Jeremy on Kissinger's legacy on NPR's podcast, Throughline. There's a link in our episode notes. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.