A Controversial Legacy

One of the most influential diplomats and foreign policy-crafters passed away this week. During his 100 years in this world, Henry Kissinger witnessed and played a role in significant global events that shaped the course of history. 

National security adviser, secretary of state, and a renowned diplomat, he served under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He leaves behind a contradictory legacy – one of building bridges and negotiating reconciliations yet often overlooking massive human costs in favour of larger strategic agendas and insidiously opening loopholes for China to exploit the weaknesses of the West.

In his controversial book, "America Second: How America's Elites Are Making China Stronger," Issac Stone Fish writes that as a consultant and private power broker between U.S. companies and Chinese government officials, Kissinger turned into "an agent of Chinese influence." He alleges that to help companies gain greater access to China's markets, Kissinger worked behind the scenes to push for better U.S. relations with China, which often meant the U.S. relaxed its demands for improved human rights commitments and other basic standards. Allegedly, Mr Kissinger was paid huge amounts in consultancy fees.

Background

A German Jew, Kissinger immigrated to the United States to escape Nazi rule in 1938. After joining the U.S. Army and fighting in World War II, he joined Harvard as a faculty member and served under two presidents in the U.S. government. He advised 12 presidents and a variety of politicians. After his career in government, he launched a consultancy and wrote several books on subjects like China, diplomacy, nuclear weapons, and even artificial intelligence.

Known for his “realist” or pragmatic foreign policy, he engineered the U.S. pivot of opening to China, facilitated its exit from Vietnam, and manoeuvred the U.S. through the peak of the Cold War. 

Kissinger negotiated an end to the Vietnam War and won the Nobel Peace Prize for this. However, critics point out that not only did he authorize the secret, indiscriminate bombing of Cambodia, but he also could have ended the war sooner. Many argue that the carnage of the war paved the way for Pol Pot to come to power with his genocidal regime. He has also been criticized for his determined support for U.S. military interventions against communism in Latin American countries, such as the overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government in Chile.

Kissinger is also known for his "shuttle diplomacy" in the Middle East, which led to the normalization of Israel-Egypt relations. In the Yon Kippur War, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel, much like Hamas did on October 7th. Kissinger and Nixon ensured military support for Israel but also pressured Israel not to go overboard with force. They diplomatically brought about a ceasefire and paved the way for the Egypt-Israel peace accord. 

Analysis

Kissinger’s under-the-table negotiations with what was then Red China paved the way for Nixon’s famous foreign policy win. Kissinger and Nixon forged the U.S. relationship with China by sidestepping the black-and-white approach where all "Reds" could not be trusted. This Cold War move not only isolated the Soviet Union but also allowed China to re-emerge into the global arena and set the stage for its economic advancement. In other words, it carved a path for formal ties between the U.S. and China and contributed to the rise of China. He played a key role in the U.S. approach to the challenges a rising China poses - economic, military, and technological.

He was also an architect of the U.S.-Soviet detente that smoothed tensions and culminated in the nuclear arms control treaties between the two opposing powers. After tense U.S.-Soviet competition, Kissinger and Nixon's diplomacy balanced relations between the U.S., China, and the Soviet Union (and later the Russian Federation). They had to manage the Soviet Union's decline along with an ambitious, rising China. Kissinger's diplomacy prevented Cold War tensions from erupting into a "hot" conflict or nuclear escalation. His diplomacy also brought about rapprochement with China and avoided a conflict breaking out on that front. The Helsinki Accords brought Soviet Europe to the negotiating table and sowed the seeds for the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence of several former Soviet states. 

In India, Kissinger was not very popular because of his open support to President Yahya Khan and Pakistan during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. Kissinger and the U.S. backed Pakistan's mass brutality against Bangladeshis and Bengalis in what was then East Pakistan in the early 1970s. Kissinger was keen to support Pakistan, which was a channel for secret U.S. overtures to China at that time. Reportedly, he went to the extent of making sexist remarks against Mrs Indira Gandhi in particular and Indians in general.

India’s refusal to join the U.S.-led bloc against communism in the Cold War caused Kissinger to view India and other smaller powers disdainfully. This failure to respect the non-aligned stance of developing and newly independent nations like India, which could not afford to side with a particular ideological bloc, is all the more ironic given that Kissinger was facilitating secret U.S. rapprochement with communist China.

India-US ties were not the best with Kissinger’s Cold War approach - the U.S. support for Pakistan in the 1971 war was one of the key reasons. Additionally, India's solidarity with communist nations like Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam did not bode well for the U.S. However, Kissinger seems to have changed his views on India after the Cold War. He supported the permanent membership of India and Japan in the United Nations Security Council. He also supported India’s nuclear progress, opposing sanctions on India for its nuclear testing. In his 2014 book “World Order,” Kissinger portrayed India as “a pivot of the twenty-first-century order.