RIP Henry Kissinger

To my mind Henry Kissinger's existence was dominated by two things: his intelligence, and his worship of power. He craved power for himself, and for his country, and he always bristled at anything he saw as a threat to either. He would lie, steal, and murder to protect American interests and his personal prominence. During his years at the top I always thought he secretly preferred dictatorship and believed that totalitarian states had a vital advantage in competition with democracies. I don't think anybody would say that Ronald Reagan was smarter than Kissinger, but Reagan understood a fundamental thing that Kissinger missed: that dictatorships had their own weaknesses, and that the Soviet Union in particular was riven with contradictions that would eventually bring it down.

Kissinger pretended to be a wise man taking the long view, justifying his crimes by pointing to the judgment of history. But he was wrong. From the 21st century we can see that history does not justify him but says, clearly and repeatedly, that sticking to principles is what works, and that few crimes ever end up being excused because their outcomes are so good. Perhaps his worldview was shaped too much by World War II, when horrible violence seemed and seems justified. But the Cold War, as it turned out, was something very different, a conflict in which the moral high ground was the vital territory. That, it seems to me, was a truth that Kissinger, for all his brilliance, could never understand.

Some words about Kissinger from others:

Gerald Ford: I think he was a super secretary of state, but Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend. . . . Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew.

George H.W. Bush: Kissinger is an extremely complicated guy. . . . He is ungracious, he yells at staff, he is intolerable in terms of human feelings. Dictatorial. ‘Get people here.’ ‘Have those people here.’ ‘Where are they?’ ‘Why do I need these papers?’ ‘Where are my papers?’ And yet all those petty little unpleasant characteristics fade away, when you hear him discussing the world situation. . . . He is like a politician with the roar of a crowd on election eve or the athlete running out at the 50-yard line just before the kickoff. The public turns him on.

Bill Clinton: He always sounded like God with a German accent.

Barack Obama really hated Kissinger. Here is one sample: We dropped more ordnance on Cambodia and Laos than on Europe in World War II, and yet, ultimately, Nixon withdrew, Kissinger went to Paris, and all we left behind was chaos, slaughter and authoritarian governments that finally, over time, have emerged from that hell. [I am still]  trying to help countries remove bombs that are still blowing off the legs of little kids.

Spencer Ackerman: Not once in the half-century that followed Kissinger’s departure from power did the millions the United States killed matter for his reputation, except to confirm a ruthlessness that pundits occasionally find thrilling. America, like every empire, champions its state murderers.

I'm going to give Kissinger himself the last word, two lines that I think sum up his worldview:

There is no reason for us to stand by and let Chile go Communist merely due to the stupidity of its own people. 

and

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.