He is one of the most influential and most decisive Secretaries of State the United States had, but he is also one of the most polemical. Jewish German-American diplomat Henry Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State during the presidency of Richard Nixon. His core foreign policy was Realpolitik-- the country will deal and adopt with the present circumstances, setting morality aside, for the sake of conflict settlement-- and with an increasing awareness in human dignity and human rights, the policy that is still executed today proves to be unjust, dismissing the welfare and involvement of others as insignificant as only major parties benefit from the practice.
He initiated "shuttle diplomacy" to ease the tensions involving Israel during the Yom Kippur War; he also let the country surrender support for South Vietnam to end the war in Vietnam, which earned him the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize; he also diplomatically engaged with the Soviet Union during the 1970 Cienfugos Crisis in Cuba to avoid a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. These moves gave him credibility to diffuse geopolitical issues, but this same strategy of his only maintained impunity and injustices, although he also had McCarthyist tendencies, seeking to reduce the global influence of the USSR.
Kissinger started the establishment of relations between the USA and the People's Republic of China. The vote at the United Nations regarding the status of the "two Chinas" (the other being the Taiwan-based Republic of China) was the crucial point, and Kissinger first proposed to premier Zhou Enlai to let the two regimes be members of the bloc simultaneously, but to avoid the United States losing face in the front of the UN, with an uncompromising PRC, the USA then switched side. Since the PRC controls the majority of the land disputed with the ROC, it has more resources and thus will have more power and influence on the world, and he saw a USA-PRC conflict as a threat to global stability, even in the COVID-19 pandemic period, fearing it would be worse than the past world wars, and even after that as he met with leader Xi Jinping this year, hoping to mend the restrained ties. Human rights in China was not a concern for the American diplomat.
But the rapprochement of the USA with the PRC was also a move directed at the USSR, which the latter had strained relations with. This behaviour was extended to other conflicts, and his inconsiderate behaviour was shown. In Indochina, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was aligned with the USSR, and the Khmer Rouge was aligned with the PRC. In a 1998 interview, Kissinger preferred KR against the SRV, but he distanced himself from the politicide-genocide committed by the Cambodian regime, but he admitted complicity. American chef Anthony Bourdain expressed his disgust concerning Kissinger's attitude and Cambodia. In the Indian Subcontinent, West Pakistan was aligned with the USA and PRC, while India veered towards USSR, and the pro-independence forces in East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh after their victory, were backed by India. Kissinger supported West Pakistan and mocked people sympathetic to Bangladesh.
Other issues he was embroiled with while working for Nixon included the rise and reign of military dictatorships in Chile (under Augusto Pinochet), Argentina (under Jorge Videla), and even Portugal's Estado Novo (the latter Nixon's two predecessors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, were not friendly with), plus Indonesia (under Suharto) which unleashed its wrath against the nascent Timor-Leste, and Zaire (Mobutu Sese-Seko's version of the Democratic Republic of the Congo). He didn't stop producing controversies; he also condemned the American recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a foolish act. His views on the Ukrainian crisis flipped-flopped: at first he argued Ukraine has sovereignty over Crimea, then when Donald Trump was president-elect in 2016 Kissinger urged him to accept "Crimea as a part of Russia". He campaigned for futile negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, postulating the former give Crimea and the Russia-occupied Donbas up, but he reversed course after meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in September this year. He proved he cannot let go of his precious product named Realpolitik.
Kissinger disliked the foreign policy of president Jimmy Carter, which is centred on human rights; it marked the change of American foreign policy, from enabling right-wing dictatorships to calling for freedom and justice. Declassified state department documents also revealed the former's efforts against the latter in addressing the atrocities of the Argentinian regime. But succeeding administrations mixed two immiscible policies (Realpolitik and morality): look at Rwanda, look at Bosnia, look at Syria, atrocities all left behind. People in Iran, people in Nicaragua, people in Belarus, people in Myanmar, they asked for intervention, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. What did Joe Biden say on Afghanistan? Nation-building is not his responsibility, and the West thus left an Afghanistan under totalitarian dictatorship and an Afghan society half-blind and half-suffering.
I have written lots of pieces denouncing this practice: the battle for global freedom, sustainable peace, convenience, Patrick Henry's speech, and even Realpolitik itself. And Henry Kissinger insisted on this policy until this year, even when he reached 100 years of age, and until his death. I wouldn't wonder if he is a critic of the concept of justice, but justice is a human need, a concept of human survival. I once said "death to Realpolitik", and with his demise shall be its.
Article posted on 30 November 2023, 16:03 (UTC +08:00).
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