Kissinger's Finally In Hell

 This take sort of looks at the role that realpolitik played in shaping US foreign policy under Kissinger. The basic idea was that nation's don't have ideals, they have interests and needs that must be prioritized over anything as mushy as "values". Jimmy Carter was elected president because of the stench of Watergate hanging over the GOP, but his actual policies that he is known for today were a direct repudiation of Kissinger's amoral foreign policy. That Rosalyn Carter and Henry Kissinger died so close to each other (and Jimmy looks soon to join them) is one of those quirks of timing.

If you want a catalog of Kissinger's crimes, I recommend Spencer Ackerman or Erik Loomis. Because he lived so long, there were more than a few gleeful obituaries in the can and ready to run. This quote is critical for me in evaluating Kissinger:

Every single person who died in Vietnam between autumn 1968 and the Fall of Saigon — and all who died in Laos and Cambodia, where Nixon and Kissinger secretly expanded the war within months of taking office, as well as all who died in the aftermath, like the Cambodian genocide their destabilization set into motion — died because of Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger was the armchair quarterback who loved to make grand plans and did not care one fuck about the people who would die as part of his stratagems. 

There are aspects of Ackerman's takedown that are a bit over the top, even for me and my hatred of Kissinger. For me, it's the idea that realpolitik is the only proper tool in a nation's foreign policy toolbox. There are actual times when a state needs to act in its interest, even if it's not according to the rules the US established after WWII. I think drone-killing Al Qaeda is just fine. Beats invading countries. Ackerman also makes a supercilious point about Biden blaming Afghans for their government's collapse as being from the "Kissinger playbook." That's stupid, the Afghan government collapsed because it was a terrible and illegitimate government despite two decades of efforts by the US to make that not so. Whatever.

Kissinger's realpolitik did have positive results: in opening China and facilitating détente. However, the idea that American foreign policy should be divorced from American values of democracy and self-determination is exactly what leads to results like Cambodia and Chile. 

When nations fight wars, they tend not to care a great deal about the niceties of the "rule based order" as we are seeing in Gaza. What distinguished Kissinger was not just Cambodia and Laos but his actively looking for OTHER places - removed from Vietnam - to practice his fuckery.

Anyway, I'm glad he's dead and I'm sad Shane McGowan is.