The Duran Podcast - Henry Kissinger, preserving empire and power

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Henry Kissinger, preserving empire and power

All right, Alexander, let's do a video on the passing away of Henry Kissinger at the age of 100. So, I guess, you know, you're a historian. You've, I'm sure you followed the life of Kissinger over the decades. I'm not a fan of Gysinger because he damaged my country greatly, Cyprus. So I'm not a fan, but I do realize that he was, I guess, you could say, a pragmatist, a realist, I guess. I mean, you know, it's a complicated picture, is what I would say, but your thoughts, your thoughts. your thoughts. I'm going to actually take issue with the last point. I don't think Henry Kissinger was anywhere near as complicated a person as many people say he was. In fact, if you actually

look at his career as a whole, and by the way, I remember him well. I mean, I can remember when he was both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. And unlike many people, I've dipped into his books and, you know, the books that he wrote when he was at Harvard, when he was an academic and various things of that kind. Anyway, for me, a very coherent picture of the sort of person that he was very clearly emerges. There's a few things to say about Gissage. Firstly, he was an extremely intelligent man and he was a serious scholar of international relations. He wrote books about international relations and history. from a historical perspective, when he was at Harvard and when he was an academic.

And they're not a startling insight, I would say. They're not of the great works of international relations that you would find from some people. But they are, you know, they're highly competent books. So he was clever. He was also, I don't personally think he was much of a realist. What I would say was he was a rather ruthless individual with two fundamental priorities, which, you know, were there throughout his political life. One priority was preserving the American Empire. The second priority was advancing the career of Henry Kissinger.

Now, it is the second, perhaps, which explains many of the mysteries. about his life and personality. The first thing to say is he was academically extremely ambitious, but throughout the 1960s, he was also very, very ambitious to get into government, and he was very skilled at leveraging his academic contacts, which he developed whilst he was at Harvard, to promote himself as the great expert on international relations. He did trips to Vietnam at the invitation of the US embassy in Vietnam, and he did reports there.

And he also, I believe, had pretty good contacts within the US intelligence community. Now, it's not widely known, but he was briefly himself an intelligence officer during the Second World War. and I think that he probably, again, it's never obvious about exactly what happened, but he was somebody, I think, who had contacts within the intelligence community in the United States throughout his adult life right up to the moment of his death. And in the 60s and the 70s, I think that served him extremely well. It meant that he was getting inside information from all kinds of sorts. that he was able to leverage to his advantage.

Now, he got into government in the 1960s by showing another aspect of his personality, which is, again, very much remember somebody who's very concerned about promoting himself. He was a born intrigue. He was very charming, extremely manipulative, very ruthless, and very, very clever. So he could see that Lyndon Johnson's government was gradually falling apart because of the

Vietnam War. He gained inside information from his various contacts about the negotiations that were going on between the United States, the Johnson administration and the North Vietnamese. He leaked that information to the Nixon campaign. and started to position himself as someone who would be a good national security advisor for Richard Nixon. And at the same time, he managed to maintain good relations with the team of Hubert Humphrey, who was the Democratic Party's nominee for the presidency in 1968. So he was positioning himself very cleverly to come out on top whoever won. He was the advisor of Nelson Rockefeller, who was at one point a candidate for the Republican nomination.

He was feeding information to Richard Nixon's campaign, and he was at the same time making sure that he was in good contacts with the Democrats. Now, he was able to do that because he was very skilled at this kind of thing. And it's quite likely, I think, that whoever won the presidency in 1968, given Kissinger's academic background, his ability to set himself up as somebody who had some knowledge of the situation in Vietnam. And as I said, he's very great person. interpersonal skills and his charm and his gift for intrigue, it's quite probable that he would have become a prominent figure in any administration, whoever it was who won the election in 1968.

In the event, it was Richard Nixon, and Richard Nixon appointed Kissinger as his national security advisor. And of course, Kittinger then spent a lot of the rest of his time as Nixon's National Security Advisor, intriguing successfully against Nixon's Secretary of State, Bill Rogers, who was by all accounts a very decent man. And eventually, of course, he was able to oust Bill Rogers and make himself Secretary of State whilst remaining Nixon's National Security Advisor. So uniquely in post-war American history, Kisinger managed to be both at one time,

Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. He had the jobs that today Sullivan has and Blinken has. He had them at the same time, which is unique. else in the United States has done that. And there's lots of stories about his skills, his charm, his gift for flattery, which, you know, this is well established, especially with Nixon, who is an insecure personality.

He flattered Nixon constantly to his face, and at the same time simultaneously. Kissinger would go away and, you know, tell people, who were opposed to Nixon. Well, actually, I'm really on your side. And I think Nixon is this, you know, paranoid individual. You know, you can't really trust him. So he was very good at that sort of thing. He was very good at being very, very gracious and interested and charming to your face.

And then he'd be somebody who would go away and, you know, try and undercut you later. Now, that worked for him very well. in the 60s and in the 70s, when he was, when he managed to become, as I said, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor simultaneously, first for Nixon and then for Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford. But afterwards, after 1976, when the Republicans lost power, it worked against him. And though, as I very clearly remember, in the 1980s,

when Ronald Reagan won the presidency, Kessinger was clearly maneuvering to be brought back into government in some form. What he found was that by this time, everybody had figured out what a untrustworthy person he was. And Ronald Reagan and his people, first Alexander Hay, who was Nixon's first Secretary of State, Reagan's first Secretary of State and who'd worked with Kiersinger on Nixon's team. And then George Schultz, who became Reagan's second Secretary of State. They didn't want to have anything to do with Kisinger. So he was kept well out of the way. By that time, as I said, he's trusting him within the higher levels of the US government,

the political establishment had basically completely broken down. But this is an aspect of Kissinger's personality, is that his gift for intrigue and his extreme ambition that people perhaps overlook. Yeah, it sounds like he was two-faced, I guess. He would be very, very kind and flattering to you to your face. And then when you turn your back, he would stick that knife in your back, I guess is what you're

described. A real politician. Absolutely. A real politician. A consumer. A consumer politician. And, you know, courtier.

He was very skilled at that kind of thing. But as I said, so compulsive at it that in the end, it worked against him. And by the way, it manifested itself also in the way that he,

conducted foreign policy because he was always someone who liked to work through back channels. He didn't really like to work through the State Department, through the normal bureaucracy. So he basically negotiated with the Chinese behind the backs of the State Department. He was working, for example, I mean, the whole business of his. going to China, meeting up with Zhou and Lai, all of that. It was very much done, again, through back channels. And he also did the same in the negotiations with the North Vietnamese, which we're going to come to it shortly.

But, I mean, he was very, he, go on. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he, he developed a certain kind of relationship with, the North Vietnamese chief negotiator, Le Duccio, which again he did in a backstays way. But of course, his most notorious back channel was the one that he established with the Soviets. He developed a very friendly relationship with the Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrenin,

a man who was perhaps in some ways even more intelligent and clever and manipulative and charming, though unlike Kissinger utterly loyal to his government, then Kissinger was himself. And they used to meet regularly. Apparently they had dinner four times a week. And they used to agree all kinds of things with each other, which the State Department often wasn't informed about. So, you know, this is very much in the style of, you know,

of how Kissinger did things. things. And just to go ahead a little, in terms of the negotiations with the Soviets over strategic arms limitation, Kiersinger and Nixon to some extent, use the back channel through Dabrenin to conduct negotiations, often making concessions behind the backs of the official negotiators who were negotiating the strategic arms limitation. Treaty with the Soviets and who were led by a very capable US diplomat, man of great integrity, Gerard Smith. And he went behind Gerard Smith and was agreeing things with the Soviets. And of course, he didn't have the technical understanding of, you know, nuclear weapons and missiles and things of that

kind that the negotiating team did. And he began to make concessions to the Soviets. and, you know, Nixon as well, by the way, began to make concessions to the Soviets, which went beyond what he should have done. The Soviets themselves began to become worried about this because they sensed that this was risking the future of the arms-controlled treaty that was being negotiated,

because if there were too many concessions, there was a risk that the treaty would fall apart. So they're actually taking. tipped off Gerrard Smith, the Soviets themselves, tipped off Gerrard Smith about what was going on. Gerald Smith then came to Nixon, Kissinger, and asked, you know, what is going on? You know, what is going on?

You really do have this back channel. And of course, Kissinger and Nixon were furious about this. They complained about this to Debrinian. They said that Debrinian was acting with bad faith. So that gives you an idea of the kind of person we're talking about, very compulsive, a compulsive intrigue, a very, very ambitious man, but also it must be said a very clever man. And I think that this is where we come to the other side of what he was trying to do, because I said one side of Nick Kissinger's personality was promoting Henry Kissinger. The other was

defending the American Empire. And that is exactly what he did. Now, when Nixon was elected in 1969 there was one overriding foreign policy issue.

The single, far and away, the most important foreign policy issue of that period in the United States was the war of Vietnam. And there was a gathering consensus in the United States that the war in Vietnam had to be brought to an end. Now, Kissinger and Nixon came in. Kissinger, by the way, this has never been

quite clear what the relationship between Nixon and Kissinger quite was. But they were already by this point when Kissinger and Nixon took office, there were already negotiations going on between the North Vietnamese and the Americans in Paris. These were the negotiations about which Kissinger leaked information to Nixon. Nixon and Kissinger understood that the war had to be brought to an end. They wanted, however, to outmaneuver the Vietnamese in the negotiations. And so someone, one or the other of them, perhaps both of them together, we never know quite how. both reached the view

that the way they needed to do that was to reach out to the people who were backing the North Vietnamese, the Chinese and the Russians. And that ultimately was the reason why there was this big opening during the Nixon administration pioneered by Kissinger

with the Chinese and the Russians. And that was a very big opening. that was why Kisinger started to contact the Chinese. He was again extremely skilled in the way he did that. He was very, very clever at playing off the fact that the Chinese had this tense relationship with the Russians at that time. There had been border clashes between China and the Soviet Union in 1969. And he used that to take that.

tell the Chinese, look, you're at risk from the Soviets. The Soviets are even thinking about using nuclear weapons against you. Eventually, he got invitations to go to China. He met with Gerund Lai, the Chinese Prime Minister, and that opened the road for Nixon to go to China. At the same time, they were very skilled and doing the same with the Soviets, who were also supplying weapons, of course, to North Vietnam. and with whom the US wanted, anyway,

was already working towards a strategic relationship. So he had this back channel through Debreinan. He was working on the nuclear arms treaties with Debrinin. It is a myth, by the way, that it was Kissinger and Nixon who launched Dayton with the Soviets. That had already begun in the 60s under First President Kennedy and then in 1967 there was a very important summit meeting which people completely forget about today

between Lyndon Johnson, who was the president at that time, and the Soviet Premier Alexei Kasegan. And it was that really that started the whole process of arms control moving forward. Anyway, so they always worked, they also worked to develop detente with the Soviets. And here I think you also see a difference, a certain difference between Nixon and Kissinger, because Kissinger seems, despite his close relationship with Dubrini, the Soviet ambassador, to have been keener on developing the relations with China, whereas Nixon always came across, to me at least, both at the time and later,

much more comfortable with the Russians and developing a good relationship with Brezhnev in particular. But anyway, that was what, you know, the thing that people always attribute is the great success of the Nixon-Kissinger period, which in some ways it was, the opening to China and the forging of detente with the Soviets, was to a very great extent, driven by the need to get the Soviets and the Chinese to help the US get out of this mess it had got itself into in Vietnam. And simultaneously with that, even as Kisinger was trying to undermine support for North Vietnam, for North Vietnam's communist backers, he of course escalation. the war because he wanted to push the North Vietnamese into concessions. This is why he was

working with the Russians and with the Chinese. And he also wanted to push the North Vietnamese into concessions. And that's why he expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos and destroyed those countries. I mean, Cambodia was essentially destroyed as a result of all of that, because he wanted a better piece than the one that Lyndon Johnson had been working towards achieving in the 1960s. Yeah, it sounds like Kissinger's philosophy, ideology, is very much part of the neocon philosophy and ideology. I mean, what he did to Cambodia, trying to get a better peace, as you say, peace. very much sounds like how the neocons are trying to go about Ukraine, you know, destroy the country in order to get a better peace,

in order to get more leverage on Russia. You have to destroy the country. Would you say that Nixon was one of the first neocons? Or was he one of the first real politic diplomats? And what about his, his legacy in his horrible legacy in South America as well. Well, not just in South, not just in South America. Not just in South.

I know, yeah. Yeah. I mentioned Cyprus. Not many people know Kissinger's involvement in Cyprus either, which is, I mean, he, he did some. I think you mentioned three big accomplishments of, of, of. Kissinger, correct? Vietnam, China, detente. Maybe there's more that. Exactly. But there are more. Yeah. There are more. But, oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, quite quite a lot of destruction as well. Well, well, I come back to what I said. There were two priorities for Henry Kissinger. One was Henry

Kissinger and his career. And I've discussed that. The other was preserving the American Embertson. empire. And he was totally ruthless and cynical in the way he went about doing that. And I mean, ruthless to an extreme degree, greater degree than any one so far in terms of practice since then. I mean, the neocons themselves who take a lot of their ideas from Kissinger, by the way, even though they at times pretend to repudiate his legacy. I mean, they share his ruthlessly. I mean, they share his ruthlessness, they don't share his cynicism. And that is a fundamental difference. But in every other respect, wherever you see, in every other conflict, in every other part of the world,

Kiersinger was totally ruthless in preserving the empire. So he was that in Chile, in Argentina, he was absolutely that in Cyprus. He supported the Greek dictatorship, the Greek junta in Greece, which is pro-American. He was fully on board with the coup that that Greek dictatorship launched in Cyprus. He knew about it in advance. He absolutely supported that. He supported covertly the intervention of the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey. He was similarly ruthless in Indonesia over East Teas.

all of these things that you see, all of these, you know, this terrible cascade of horrors that were perpetrated, and in the Middle East as well, by the way, he backed the dictatorship of the Shah of Iran. He was, you know, all of these horrors that people are, you know, talk about with Henry Kissinger, just like the expansion of the war into Cambodia in order to try to get a better peace deal than the one he was, you know, the one that the Lyndon Johnson administration was working towards in the Vietnam War. All of that was very, very much about preserving and sustaining and strengthening the American Empire. So on the one hand, he understood that he had to open up to China in order to put pressure on the North Vietnamese. At the same time, he had to pursue detent

with the Soviets. He also, because he was something of a strategic thinker, and that is indisputable, did think in a way that apparently Nixon did not, that opening up to China would increase pressure on the Soviets. As I said, Nixon seems to have been much more sincere about the relationship with the Soviets than Kissinger was.

Kisinger's approach to the Soviets, as I said, was much more calculating, whereas Nixon one's senses did want to forge a long-term, sustainable relationship with the Soviets. But anyway, in every other respect, Cyprus, the Middle East, Argentina, Chile, East Timor, all of these things. They're all of a peace with Kissinger.

Ruthless, absolutely ruthless preservation of the American Empire at any cost and a willingness to apply scorched earth tactics involving the deaths of millions of people, ultimately, which we mustn't overlook, in order to do that. And he was able to do that. that because for a short time, especially after Nixon's political position in the United States began to collapse during the Watergate scandal, Kiesinger was able to position himself as the absolutely dominant personality in US foreign policy. And he already exercised great influence even before then. I mean, he was apparently giving direct orders as national security.

advisor to the military in South Vietnam, for example, drawing up bombing targets and things of that kind, even though he was not properly speaking in the chain of command. So this is part of what Kisinger was about. So I don't think it's complicated. I think once you understand that, that he had to deal with this problem of Vietnam and at the same time he wanted to preserve the empire and promote himself, when you understand all that together, everything that seems so complicated about Kissinger begins to make sense. Okay, so I understand what you're getting at by saying it's not complicated, but I think for people trying to understand Kissinger and Kissinger's legacy, you know, of his influence on foreign policy today, I think it is complicated. But first, let me ask you a

quick question, just a quick question. Is Kissinger the one diplomat that exercised real politic? Would you say that's yes or no? I mean, or was he more a pragmatist? I'm going to say no, actually. Because Medvedev-Polmo pragmatist. And yeah, no, exactly. I don't think, I think that there is a fundamental misunderstanding about Kissinger. People talked about Kissinger as a. And, exponent of foreign policy realism. I don't really think he was. I mean, I don't think he was any kind of foreign policy realist in the way that, say, John Mearsheimer is. What I think he was, was a ruthless and very cynical practitioner of empire politics, if I can put it like that. I mean, he wasn't somebody who really believed in a concert of great powers or whose overriding priority was to preserve peace or things of that kind.

And, you know, he was pragmatic and he was extremely intelligent as well as being manipulative and cynical and all of those other, and ruthless and all of those other things. The best thing I would say about Kissinger, and it is an important thing, actually, is that he was not stupid and he was not mad, unlike some of the people who appear to be in government today. So that is a fundamental difference between them and him. Yeah, that's the big difference, the big problem that we have today is that we have, uh, we have, uh, we have, uh, collective West diplomats, foreign policy leaders and foreign policy makers who think they're smarter than people like Kissinger, but they're mad. They're mad. And that's, that's, I think, the problem that we have. But how do you explain then? Here's where it gets complicated, for me at least. How do you explain someone like Putin calling Kissinger, wise? That's a direct quote,

wise. He said far-sighted, outstanding. He did have a friendship with Kissinger. This is not a secret. They would speak and they did have a friendship. I don't know, the last two, three years with everything going on in Ukraine if they were speaking or had any communication or any type of contact. But definitely before all of Ukraine broke out, Putin and Kissinger were very much on speaking. on speaking terms and very complimentary of each other. So how do you explain that then? Given Kissinger's history, you mentioned the good that he did, even though it may have been self-serving for himself or for empire.

You know, he is praised in China. He is mourned in China. The Chinese have good things to say about Kissinger. And you listed just some of the bad. How do you explain stuff like Putin or stuff like China? China, crazy. I think that was a little more simple. Yes.

Well, indeed. And by the way, as far as I'm aware, the last foreign trip that he did, which was just a few weeks ago, was to Beijing, where he was met by Xi Jinping himself and was hosted in the Dai Yotai guesthouse, which is the Chinese government's official guesthouse. and they put him in the same room where he had been housed in advance of his meeting, his first meeting. His secret meeting, by the way, nobody knew about that trip, with Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Prime Minister,

which started the whole process towards the opening up towards China. Well, there is a very simple explanation why the Russians and the Chinese like, or at least they praised Kiersinger, which is, I suspect that certainly the Russians, know pretty much the kind of person he was. And we're talking about the Russians.

I mean, the Soviet foreign minister of that time, Andre Grameke, apparently didn't have much, he didn't particularly like Kishinger, even though, you know, they had this, he had this good close contact with Dabrini. and, you know, the Soviet ambassador. But why do the Chinese and the Russians, you know, look back with nostalgia to the era of Kissinger?

Well, it's not difficult ultimately to understand. Because even though, and in part because Kissinger's whole strategy was to shore up the American Empire, in order to do that at that particular time, This is where he was pragmatic and today's neocons are not. Kiersinger realized in the late 60s and early 70s that you had to develop good communications and relations with the Russians and with the Chinese. And he was able to put all, you know, his ideological, well, I don't think he had many ideological feelings actually.

But anyway, hostilities to one side. And go to Moscow, go to Beijing, open up to the Chinese, deal with the Russians. He would have frequent meetings with Debrinin. He would treat the Russians in a civil way. He would treat the Chinese in a civil way. They were able to forge nuclear arms control agreements with each other. For the Chinese, this is the period when China finally comes in from the cold. It's able to establish itself as a full member of the international community.

It's in contact with the United States. It's working towards opening up to the world. It lays the foundations for the China that we have now. And for the Russians, it's the... best period of U.S. Russian relations. The period of detente, the Americans are working with the Russians, that treating the Russians respectfully as equal partners. This is not what happened, of course, in the 90s. Remember, it's a difference from what happened in the 90s. And it's not surprising that the Russians remember Kissinger. And by the way, even more Nixon,

as somebody who, you know, treated them in a completely different way than any other U.S. leader since then, except for a certain period, Ronald Reagan and then George H.W. Bush. Yeah, I guess you would say that Nixon was ruthless, cynical, but he also had empathy in that he understood the other. side's position and the other side's interest as well. Yes, he was promoting empire at all costs, but he understood what the other side was looking to accomplish or achieve or what they wanted as well. So he was able to communicate that and he was able to operate diplomatically because he had that, he had that empathy, which is something you don't see any of the collective West leaders have. They never think about. We talked about this in a show last week.

They never think about Russia's position, what Russia wants, what Russia's goals are, what Russia's looking for. They don't care. I think you said it best, actually, naked capitalism. Eve Smith says it best, which is that the collective West, what they do is they negotiate and talk to each other, but they never, you know, talk to anyone that's also involved in negotiations. They don't consider anybody else. They spend all their time negotiating and talking between themselves. that is entirely correct. I mean, in Kissinger's case, he was a charming and manipulative person. In order to be manipulative, you have at least to listen to the other side. And Kissinger did that. I mean, he did listen very much to the other side.

The thing to say about Kissinger is that he also had, and this is, I think, almost unique in terms of, American diplomats and officials. And I think this is partly perhaps explained by his background. I mean, he was, he was born in Germany. He lived through some of the period of the Third Reich. He was very familiar with European politics. Giersinger understood power. And he had a respect for power. and he understood the power both of the Soviet Union and of the Chinese. So he was prepared to listen to them. By contrast, by the way, he was never interested in Europe.

He didn't pay very much attention to the Europeans, because to be frank, they didn't have very much power, so why waste time with them? And of course, everybody else in the empire, well, if they tried to assert themselves, they would get knocked down. But with the Russians and with the Chinese, you're absolutely correct. Everybody who talks about Kissinger says the same thing, that he was someone who would listen.

And he wasn't giving lectures to them all the time. And, of course, being a total cynic himself, he wasn't somebody who was interested in moralising and verging. signaling and things of that kind, which again, of course, the Russians and the Chinese appreciated both at the time and even more so, you know, in hindsight, looking back to him, because of course they have to put up with the moralizing and the sermonizing of every other American political leader and European political leader that has followed Kissinger's sins. Yeah. Okay, final question to wrap it up. Let's bring it up to date today, the conflict in Ukraine. I think we could say that was Kissinger's last foray into geopolitics, into foreign policy. He wrote early on in the conflict, he wrote about how Ukraine should not get into NATO, pretty much. That's what he said. And then he changed his mind maybe about six months ago.

I believe, or three to six months ago, he wrote another article where he said that Ukraine absolutely should be allowed entrance into NATO. What do you make of Kissinger's position with regards to today's Ukraine crisis and his influence in general on people like Blinken, Newland, Sullivan, all these guys. If he has an influence. Yeah, I mean, he's entirely all...

I don't think he had very much influence in truth. But it is all of a piece with Kissinger and Kissinger's personality. Now, I said, you know, that Nixon, Richard Nixon, his boss, does seem to have had a genuine concern about achieving a sustainable peace with the Russians. Nixon, it is well known in the late 1980s and early 1990s,

and especially in the early 1990s, became extremely concerned about the way US policy was developing towards Russia. He tried repeatedly to contact the Clinton administration. I'm talking about Nixon now, and telling this policy that you're pursuing towards the Russians, expanding NATO, micromanaging their domestic policies, doing all that kind of thing, is completely wrong. It is going to undermine any basis for a future, stable, long-term relationship between the United States and Russia. And if you know anything about Russian history and about Russia as well, it's going to store up terrible problems in the future. Now, Nixon was doing that. Kisinger was not.

Kirstencher, as I said, always understood power politics, but he always, and to his dying moment, that his very last breath, he remained an extremely ambitious man. He always wanted to be there in a position where people took him seriously, listened to his every word, went to him for advice, did that kind of thing. So at the start of the conflict in Ukraine, he says, you know, it's a big mistake.

Ukraine can't join NATO. We've got to look for some other solution for this problem. He takes the, that's the pragmatic aspect of Kissinger, the one who understands power, the person who understands power relations. He then immediately discovers that this is a deeply unpopular policy with the foreign policy blob in Washington, which is absolutely and completely committed to bringing Ukraine into NATO. So he doesn't do what a genuine realist, a Professor Meersheimer, a John Meersheimer would do, which is stick to the position, which he knows is the right one, which is Ukraine can't

join NATO. And we've got to try and find some means to end. this problem. What he does is, of course, he modifies his stance to suit the current, you know, opinion, if you like, of the political elite in Washington so that he can remain in their good graces and continue to get all the invitations to the speakers, to the lectures, and get all the big payments that come with that. And of course, he set up his own consultancy, Kissinger Associates. I don't know whether that still exists, by the way, but he did. And of course, he wouldn't have wanted to lose the funders and the backing of people

like that. So you see the contrast between a genuine realist, a genuine realist, someone like Mearsheimer, who says, you know, this isn't working. This doesn't make sense. Let's change our, well, let's put aside this. wrong policy and try and come to a serious long-term agreement, if we can. And someone like Nixon, I'm sorry, someone like Kissinger, who at some level understands that, but isn't going to go against the people in Washington that he wants in the end to impress. Yeah, all right. A lot that can be discussed about Kissinger, but I think we'll leave it there,

unless you have any other final thoughts on Henry Kissinger, and we'll wrap up the video. Well, I'm going to say this. I mean, the thing about Kissinger is that the extreme cynicism with which he conducted U.S. foreign policy ultimately goes far to explain why his achievements didn't last because he never forged that long-term relationship with the Russians for example, which arguably needed to be. Deitant was never really consolidated because for Kiesinger,

it was essentially an exercise in opportunism and great power mechanics. It was never really intended to stabilize the situation in Europe, about which ultimately he wasn't that interested. So I think many of the problems that we are faced with today have their origins in the policies that he conducted and the kind of man he was, even if we do perhaps sometimes look back on his achievements and say to ourselves, well, there is at least someone who actually achieved something when he was head of US diplomacy, which no one since then, we cannot say that of any one. else. To the same degree. All right. To the same degree.

Yeah. All right. We'll leave it there. The durad. dot locals.com. We are on Odyssey Rumble, which telegram, Rock Finn and Twitter X,

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