“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.” — Anthony Bourdain
Known as one of the most effective secretaries of state the United States has ever seen, Henry Kissinger’s legacy remains both celebrated and deeply contested. His death last year saw parades of mourning, with world leaders, diplomats, and figureheads paying tribute to his strategic brilliance and diplomatic excellence. Particular career highlights, so to speak, were the opening of diplomatic channels with China, dubbed ‘ping-pong diplomacy’, and the arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. He even won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Vietnam War, an award he himself was shocked to receive. Kissinger’s career, while marked with ground breaking diplomatic negotiation, was tainted with deep ethical controversies, such as the secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos, support for authoritarian regimes in Latin America, and the prolonging of the Vietnam war, and there are many more. This is why Kissinger is such a polarising figure; many people struggle to see the master diplomat and architect of horrific war crimes as the same man, often reducing his legacy to one extreme or the other in a simplification of a deeply nuanced politician.
To understand Kissinger, like any significant leader, we must look at his upbringing. Growing up in 1930s Germany as a Jewish boy was far from easy. Kissinger was faced with anti-semitism from his peers daily, and was victim to several beatings at the hands of Nazi youth groups, anti-semitic remarks on the streets, and the denial of education. By 1938, the Nuremberg laws had been enacted, forcing Kissinger’s family to flee to New York, where they ended up permanently settling. Kissinger’s difficult childhood provides an explanation for why he ended up in such one of the most powerful positions in US government. Often, a person who feels powerless in their childhood tries to regain that power in adulthood, sometimes by any means necessary. However, the abused male is a common trope amongst war criminals. Hitler and Stalin were both beaten by their alcoholic fathers. Putin grew up on the streets of Leningrad, devastated by the three-year Nazi siege that left his family with nothing. We must remember that childhood traumas provide explanations, not excuses, for the committing of egregious war crimes.
Perhaps the most horrifying of Kissinger’s actions were the secret bombings of Cambodia and Laos. Under Kissinger’s directive, the US expanded its existing bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos, with the ultimate goal of destroying North Vietnamese supply routes, including the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They were called secret because they did not receive congressional approval. Between 1969 and 1973, the US dropped over 2.7 million tonnes of bombs on Cambodia. To put this into perspective,
the Allies dropped just over 2 million tonnes of bombs throughout the entirety of World War Two. The civilian casualties were catastrophic; hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and 2 million were displaced. Furthermore, the bombing had devastating long-term impacts. The destabilisation of the country led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, and the genocide they subsequently carried out killed nearly two million people. The effects of the mass bombing campaign of Cambodia are still felt to this day, with the country littered with unexploded bombs, a constant threat to civilians still existing almost fifty years after the war.(and in Laos)
The idea that ran US foreign policy throughout the cold-war was anti-communism, and the belief in the ‘Domino Theory’. This is why, when we look at virtually any country that became socialist, particularly one close to the US, we can see that the US tried to reverse what they saw as a threat to the American, capitalist way of life. Kissinger oversaw efforts to destabilise Chile’s democratically elected government under socialist President Salvador Allende. Under his jurisdiction, the CIA supported a military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. Pinochet’s dictatorship was characterised by widespread human rights abuses, including execution and torture. According to Henry Kissinger, this was better than socialism. In total, at least 3,000 Chileans were killed, and tens of thousands were tortured or imprisoned by Pinochet’s brutal regime. This also raises serious doubts about America’s commitment to defending democracy in their ‘diplomatic interventions’, and if such actions reflect the want to advance strategic interests above all else.
Finally, the conflict he won a Nobel Peace Prize for ending,Vietnam, in 1973. What first meets the eye is a talented diplomat who put an end to the suffering of millions. However, the war in Vietnam could have ended four years earlier. In 1968, Henry Kissinger sabotaged peace talks between the US, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam, by secretly advising the South Vietnamese to reject a peace deal. This was done purely to benefit Nixon’s presidential campaign, a deliberate prolonging of war for political advantage, with Nixon elected as president on the basis of peace with Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and over 20,000 US soldiers were killed between 1968-1973, in a war that could have been over, sparing all of these lives. It makes you wonder how the man potentially responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the war can win an award celebrating peace.
So, if Henry Kissinger has committed such horrific acts of war, why, like the quote at the top suggests, did he never sit in the Hague amongst the likes of Milošević? Well, firstly, it was incredibly easy to justify his actions under the pretence of fighting communism, in the name of ‘national security’, effectively immunising him from scrutiny. Second, the International Justice System is dominated by the West, the US and its allies. The UN Security Council is dominated by Western nations, with the US holding a critical veto, the ICJ does not have the jurisdiction over individuals like Kissinger, and the US is noteven a member of The International Criminal Court. As a result, war criminals who are arguably comparable to Kissinger in their actions, like Milosevic and Sadam Hussein were properly prosecuted in the ICC, whereas figures like Kissinger are able to wield global influence to their advantage in order to protect themselves.
Through understanding and analysing Henry Kissinger, we can see leaders through a more nuanced lens. Like regular criminals, war criminals are not black or white. Henry Kissinger’s impressive diplomacy does not justify or discount the clear crimes against humanity that were committed either directly by him or supported by him. These two things are not mutually exclusive; they can both be true at once. Even the best of diplomats should not be immune to international law.
