OPINION - Kissinger and the tragedy of American diplomacy

By Adam McConnel

- The author holds a master’s and PhD in history from Istanbul’s Sabanci University, where he taught Turkish history for nine years.

ISTANBUL (AA)- Heart surgeon: “As we finished up the third bypass, it suddenly hit me that I was holding the heart of a man whose policies had once condemned thousands to death! Then I thought of my Hippocratic Oath and sewed you up.”

Kissinger: “Good oath, that.”[1]

Not many people warrant an obituary for which the title is simply their last name, but former United States (US) Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was one of them. Because I was too young to have directly witnessed Kissinger’s term as a policy maker, in my youth I learned about him through the media, especially from Garry Trudeau’s hilarious needling of Kissinger in his “Doonesbury” strip. Later, when I understood Kissinger’s policies in more concrete terms, I was understandably horrified and have subsequently understood him as one of a number of US policy makers who were bona fide war criminals. On the other hand, Kissinger’s oversight of the secret negotiations leading to Richard Nixon’s China trip in 1972 – which completely rearranged the Cold War’s international dynamics – is justifiably considered one of the Cold War’s most astute episodes of diplomacy.

-Kissinger eulogies versus Kissinger condemnations

As would be expected, Kissinger’s death elicited a wave of commentary, both hagiographical and hostile. Kissinger’s political career spurred many writers to focus on his foreign policy legacy, on the damage that Kissinger’s policies created around the world, the setbacks to emerging democracies, the countless lives lost. Among Western commentators, especially New York Times (NYT) columnists catch my eye; as writers for the Gray Lady, American imperialism’s flagship publication, their stances are worth noting. Several writers penned critiques of Kissinger that could be termed “scathing,” but “Hamlet” provides the needed reminder: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” [2]

Jamelle Bouie’s column was the best of the bunch, [3] but even he did not go where the subject’s logic demands, to US foreign policy as a whole, in the long term, since World War II. At times, the condemnations of Kissinger that one sees in some sectors of the US media seem hyperbolic, as if he is being scapegoated. He was also a darling of the US political elites, so maybe it was easier to blame him rather than delve into the larger questions that always hovered around such criticisms of Kissinger.

-A symptom, not the cause

The essence of the issue is that, in terms of US foreign policy, Kissinger did not do anything novel or extraordinary. Covert support of coups d’état in other countries? That began (at the latest) with the Eisenhower Administration in 1953. [4] Massive, illicit bombing campaigns that caused large-scale civilian casualties? The US had been doing that in Vietnam long before Kissinger became Nixon’s national security advisor. [5] Coddling non-democratic, but friendly, foreign autocrats, even the bloodiest ones? The idea that foreign dictators were tolerable as long as they remained loyal to the US pre-dated Kissinger by several decades. [6]

What should be stressed is that Kissinger, though he should be faulted for amoral, anti-democratic, and destructive policy choices, continued already present tendencies: foreign policy development centralized in the President and his closest advisors; diplomacy increasingly personalized in those same advisors and the President’s person; gradual reduction in the State Department’s role in policy creation and execution; a willingness to use violent, draconian, and anti-democratic tools to bring about desired political changes in foreign societies. Kissinger did not initiate those trends, but he did take the steps that those trends’ logic would dictate.

In 1973, as National Security Advisor Kissinger prepared to take on Secretary of State responsibilities, former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s posthumous book, “This Vast External Realm,” was published. A collection of essays on various foreign affairs topics, the book ends with a chapter titled “The Eclipse of the State Department.”[7]

During that section, in which Acheson mentioned Kissinger specifically, Acheson elaborated on whether the State Department’s decline was desirable or permanent. His conclusion was ambivalent, stating only that he would not have liked to be in the same situation, but also that the most important issue was whether the manner in which foreign policy was designed and implemented served the public’s interest. Thus even someone as qualified to judge as Acheson was did not see that trend – a trend for which Kissinger was generally seen as a key participant – as a disastrous development.

-The tragedy of Kissinger and US diplomacy

Instead, for me, Kissinger represented what the revisionist US historian William Appleman Williams termed “the tragedy of American diplomacy,” something akin to the personification of US foreign policy’s fundamental contradictions and agonizing failures:

“American leaders were not evil men. They did not conceive and excuse some dreadful conspiracy. Nor were they treacherous hypocrites. They believed deeply in the ideals they proclaimed, and they were sincere ... Precisely for those reasons, however, American diplomacy contained the fundamental elements of tragedy. It held within itself… several contradictory truths. Those truths, allowed to develop according to their own logic ... would ultimately clash in a devastating upheaval and crisis.”[8]

The US, founded self-consciously as a new society free from the ideological and confessional binds of the Old World, always flaunted its youth and idealism. For a period after WWII, as the United Nations (UN) was founded and the Marshall Plan devised and implemented, the US even looked as though it had the political will to back up its democratic ideals abroad with real, tangible policies and the material resources needed to underpin those policies.

Kissinger was a refugee from the Old World’s ideological conflicts, specifically the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) version, and a person who would seemingly appreciate more readily the attractiveness of US ideals and their potential appeal to other societies. An unquestionably brilliant mind, Kissinger’s career trajectory could have served as an advertisement for the advantages American society granted to those who adapted to its system and possibilities.

But some fundamental characteristic eventually prevented both the US and Kissinger from making the moral, the visionary, the humane, or the rational decisions necessary when engaging with people and societies from “this vast external realm,” for sound foreign policy. Instead, short-term material interests, violence guided by arrogance and ignorance, war crimes, and ideological posturing step-by-step became the guidelines for US foreign policy beginning in the 1950s. Kissinger did not invent those choices and he was not the first American official to indulge in them, but Kissinger grasped the reins of US foreign policy and kept the troika pointed in the same direction. Gogol could have just as easily written about the US:

“And you, Russia – aren’t you racing headlong like the fastest troika imaginable? The road smokes under you, bridges rattle, and everything falls behind…. The carriage bells break into an enchanted tinkling, the air is torn to shreds and turns into wind; everything on earth flashes past, and, casting worried, sidelong glances, other nations and countries step out of her way.”[9]

Beyond his egregious policy choices, Kissinger should be primarily faulted for not discerning that the US was not fulfilling its ideals abroad. As the primary influence over foreign policy during his time as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Kissinger did not try to put the derailed train of US foreign policy ideals back onto a more enlightened path. For even that effort, history would have remembered him far more kindly.

[1] “Doonesbury.” March 13, 1982.

[2] Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2.

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/opinion/henry-kissinger-foreign-policy-democracy.html

[4] https://apnews.com/article/5111167bcaf84892b01eea93eea4bc01

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasio_Somoza_Garcia

[7] pp. 276-298.

[8] William Appleman Williams. “The Tragedy of American Diplomacy.” 2009 ed. pp. 2-3.

[9] Nikolai Gogol’s novel “Dead Souls” concludes with those lines. Translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew.

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*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.