Kissinger: A quiet end to a bloody legacy

Last May, a few days shy of his 100th birthday, Henry Alfred Kissinger arrived at the Economic Club of New York. The Club, touted as one of the most elite organisations in the city, hosted a special celebration programme to mark the occasion. He gave a speech for about an hour where he spoke about, among other things, China's rise. 

It was a grand occasion with a birthday cake and a sea of men in dark suits and women in bright dresses singing 'Happy Birthday'. Kissinger blew out the candles änd "then raised his two arms with a Richard Nixon-like flourish," journalist Jonathan Guyer, one of the attendees, described in a Vox article. 

It is not everyday that the most most sought-after name in US diplomacy turns a century (even decades after leaving office in 1977). A Cold War strategist and the National Security Advisor (and the US State of Secretary) to two American presidents (Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford) Kissinger outlived most of his peers. 

And yet, you can be rest assured that many around the world - in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Cyprus, Indonesia and Chile - uttered a sigh of relief, if not outright celebrated, the passing of Kissinger on Wednesday, after years of calling for accountability of someone who in their eyes was a 'warmonger', to say the least. 

Kissinger's foreign policy and courses of action during his active years in office altered the lives of millions across the world. Meanwhile, he continued to live a life of aplomb – launching a magazine, receiving a Nobel Peace Prize and travelling around the world lecturing and advising world leaders and foreign policy experts on the geopolitical calculations of the late 20th and early 21st century. 

Rejecting Bangladesh and other 'strategic' moves

In April 1971, Kissinger and the Nixon administration would come to dismiss a telegram from a US diplomat, Archer Kent Blood, stationed at erstwhile East Pakistan. The telegram in question, parts of which read, "Our government has failed to denounce atrocities.... Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy...," would live on to become the most-strongly worded expression of dissent in the history of US Foreign Service. 

But to no avail. Kissinger and Nixon did not flinch. They did not object, let alone denounce, Pakistan's onslaught on East Pakistan. The nine-month long 1971 Liberation War resulted in an estimated three million deaths and throughout the time Kissinger and Nixon would remain steadfast in turning a blind eye to Pakistan's atrocities, at times against the wishes of the State Department, as released diplomatic cables from that time would later reveal.

Kissinger and Nixon wanted to protect West Pakistan, which they saw as a backchannel to China and an US ally. The deployment of US seventh fleet to Bay of Bengal in December 1971 by the Nixon administration was another calculative and strategic move to serve their own interests.   

And that's what the decade is marred with, "strategic moves" by Kissinger working under first the Nixon administration and then the Gerald Ford administration. But Kissinger was known not just for these diplomatic manoeuvres but also his personal disdain for his adversaries, exemplified by his description of Bangladesh as a 'basket case' and many such sharp-tongued retorts against other peoples and leaders.  

Operation Breakfast saw the first carpet bombing of Cambodia in 1969 – it continued till 1973. Additionally, Kissinger and the Nixon administration drew out the Vietnam war to Cambodia and Laos. Cambodian civilian deaths range over 1,50,000. And a recent Intercept report by Nick Turse reveals higher figures of death tolls in Cambodia caused by Kissinger's decisions.   

Back in South America, critics say, Kissinger was the architect for the removal of Chile's democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973. This triggered a military coup leading to thousands of deaths in the following years. 

In 1976, Kissinger told Augusto Pinochet, the military dictator who toppled Allende, "We want to help, not undermine you. You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende."

In 1974, Kissinger also supported Turkey's invasion of Cyprus resulting in over 500 deaths. 

Kissinger and the Nixon administration also green signalled Indonesian President Suharto's invasion of East Timor in 1975. Estimated casualties number at 2,00,000 deaths. The 1976 Dirty War in Argentina is, critics and historians say, a result of Kissinger's "strategic" moves also. Death tolls are estimated at 30,000 of Argentine civilians. 

China, diplomacy and business 

Considered as an "öld friend" by Chinese President Xi, observers say, much of Kissinger's core legacy is stumped into the role he played in building the gateway, or rapprochement to China, with the United States. And his ability to recognise China as a rising power early on. 

A testament to that end is Kissinger's success in cultivating close ties with five generations of top Chinese leaders, from Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and finally Xi Jinping. 

In April this year, Kissinger told The Economist in an interview, that the fate of humanity depends on whether America and China can get along and "the rapid progress of AI, in particular, leaves them only five-to-ten years to find a way."

Kissinger also said in The Economist interview, "They [China] want to be powerful. They're not heading for world domination in a Hitlerian sense. That is not how they think or have ever thought of world order."

Kissinger visited China 100 times over the last 50 years and bolstered the US-China relationship, "the fact that Kissinger has remained more popular and influential in China than at home underscores the importance Beijing has attached to maintaining ties with the US, despite their ideological and geopolitical rivalry," wrote a former diplomat and journalist Shi Jiangtao.  

Even Kissinger's harshest critics agree of Kissinger's diplomacy poweress, which is what helped him sustain a position as an "advisor" or a consultant to parliaments, world leaders and also businesses.  

Kissinger monetised his diplomatic merit in the world of business as well, which Guyer argues, is often overlooked, writing, "when he launched the firm [Kissinger Associates] four decades ago, journalists raised many of the same questions that I think about today. Is it ethical for a former senior official to continue to serve on federal advisory boards that give policy recommendations to the Pentagon, the State Department, or the president while also advising companies that are likely to profit from those geopolitical decisions?

Kissinger helped normalise this dynamic of being a consultant to big business and a public policy voice." 

In fact, "Kissinger also served as a conduit between big business and China,"wrote Jonathan Guyer. 

Kissinger's ties with China can be traced back to the secret 1971 Beijing trip — which the American statesman undertook to arrange for the-then US President Nixon to visit China in the following year. Kissinger's first trip to China in 1971 soon became a landmark in foreign policy and geopolitics. It also, of course, informed his heinous decision to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Bangalis in the 1971 Liberation War.

The illusion of accountability 

Accountability evaded Kissinger. Akin to what Winston Churchill's policy meant for the subcontinent in the 1943 famine, Kissinger's actions and policy in the 1970s also bled out many lives in the region and beyond. And yet, Kissinger led a life without accountability. 

This is not to say there were no attempts to hold Kissinger accountable, or that critics and books on Kissinger's life do not exist. In fact, regardless of how nuanced an article on Kissinger is, his crimes against humanity nearly always find room in print. 

In mid-2002, prosecutors in Chile, Argentina, Spain and France wanted Kissinger to testify about what happened in Chile. In the same year, a Chilean judge and an Argentine judge wanted Kissinger to at least answer written questions about the US involvement in the coup and the American involvement in Operation Condor, respectively.  

In 2002, a French judge sent the police to Kissinger's Paris hotel calling him to appear at the Justice Ministry the next day and answer questions about five French citizens who disappeared after the Chilean coup. Instead, Kissinger promptly left town.

"But Kissinger is one fish the United States does not want on anyone's hook. The attempts to arrest or even question him touch off Washington's worst fears about the evolving movement for international justice," wrote Marcus Gee, columnist for The Globe and Mail.

Earlier this year, in an interview with The Economist, Kissinger explained his belief that "human rights matter, but disagrees with putting them at the heart of your policy."

'Is there anything you would like to apologise for?'

After Christopher Hitchens's The Trial for Kissinger (2001) was published,  "Kissinger sought assurances before doing media interviews that the book would not be raised. He still rarely answers reporters' questions about the Vietnam War," wrote journalist Jonathan Guyer. 

During his Economic Club of New York hosted Birthday extravaganza, Kissinger did not take questions from the media, noted Guyer. 

But Jonathan Guyer samples an interaction between an anchor and Kissinger in his Vox article in relation to how Kissinger sees his actions and life's work. 

Anchor Brian Williams asked Kissinger at a Kennedy Library conference in 2006 on Vietnam. 'Is there anything you would like to apologise for?'

Kissinger called the question "highly inappropriate." "We have to start with the assumption that serious people were making serious decisions with the national interest and world interest at heart," he said.

The architect of wars and secret coups came with sage advice for young leaders, as The Economist interview repeatedly leaned toward, but Kissinger also came with the privilege of impunity.