2023-11-30 08:11:01
Since the United States began bombing Cambodia in 1969 under the supervision of the then White House National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, many had dreamed that he would end his days rotting in prison, after being tried by an international court. It was not so. The most famous Secretary of State in the history of the United States enjoyed his influence until he was one hundred years old and died yesterday in the Connecticut mansion where he lived, from where he frequently traveled to his Manhattan offices to work up to 15 hours a day, honored in half the world.
It was that consultancy that he founded that announced his death last night without explaining the causes. The one who was National Security Advisor and Secretary of State with Richard Nixon and then with Gerald Ford managed to keep the pulse of international politics until the end. Blind in one eye, half deaf and with multiple heart surgeries, the man held responsible for many of the crimes for which the United States is hated continued to write influential articles on the key issues of global geopolitics with cold pragmatism. that always characterized him. In the last year of his life, he offered a roadmap to end the war in Ukraine, publicly corrected the Biden administration on China’s intentions and disagreed on the role Russia should play in the world.
“Ukraine has acquired one of the most effective and best-equipped ground armies in Europe thanks to the United States and its allies,” he said in an article published in the United Kingdom last November. «A peace process should tie Ukraine to NATO, however that is expressed. “The alternative of neutrality no longer makes sense, especially after Finland and Sweden have joined NATO.”
Kissinger gave guidelines to European and American politicians on how they should proceed in this conflict for which a year ago he recommended establishing a ceasefire line along the borders that existed when the war began, with the idea of guaranteeing Russia the territory. which he had occupied a decade earlier, “including Crimea”, in exchange for a ceasefire negotiation. In that new order, in which he contemplated self-determination referendums supervised by the international community, “in the end Russia should find its place.”
Relations with China
It was he who found China its place in the world while he was Nixon’s secretary of state. Many blame him for having created an Asian giant monster that threatens to devour the United States, but he never showed any remorse, neither about that nor about many other things. “It would have happened sooner or later,” he said in May in an interview with CBS upon turning his century. He felt honored to be the center of attention again and seriously answered questions about his political successes and his influence in the world. “If one of his aides picked up the phone and called Beijing to say that Dr. Kissinger wanted to speak with President Xi Jinping, do you think he would pick up the phone?” the presenter asked. “It’s very likely, yes.”
Two months later he made a show of force with a surprise trip to China, where he was received by the Minister of Defense, Li Shangfu, in what could well have been his last trip abroad and his last great public challenge. When his CBS interviewer brought up that some call him a “war criminal” for the 150,000 lives the bombings cost in Cambodia, he lost favor. “Come now! “We have been bombarding with all types of weapons every guerrilla that we have opposed in each administration,” he boldly acknowledged. “You’re doing this show because I’m turning 100 and now you’re talking about something that happened 60 years ago!” he bellowed.
With Leonidas Brezhne in 1973, with President Nixon and on a visit to France in 1975.
His sins for history did not begin or end with the Vietnam War. The world was so dependent on his words that the press conference in Paris in which he announced that peace was “at hand” was transcribed and published in its entirety on a double page in ‘The New York Times’. He was also credited with the success of ending the Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel and achieving lasting peace for the Hebrew country with some of its neighbors, but his push for coups to control the world will be part of the epitaph of he. There are many to mention, from East Timor, to Bangladesh or Cyprus, but in Latin America what will always hurt the most will be those that he instigated against President Salvador Allende in Chile and Isabel Perón in Argentina.
Long after he officially left the government in 1977, after having served under Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, he continued to operate in the shadows. Documents recently declassified by the National Security Archives reveal the meeting he held with Pinochet’s foreign minister, Hernán Cubillos, to advise him on how to treat the Carter government – “with brutality” – to achieve its objectives, after having instigated the coup and having personally supported Pinochet, with whom he met in Santiago de Chile.
Kissinger also informally advised George W Bush on the invasion of Iraq, and publicly advised Donald Trump. For all this and much more, he lived until his last day escorted by security guards who protected him from the death threats he received, no matter how much he boasted that the rulers of the world opened their doors to him.
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