Loading ...Foreign Born Immigrant? In Charge of the USA. Huh???
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Kissinger was born into a Jewish family in Germany, and fled to the US in 1938 after the Nazis seized power. He rose to one of the highest offices in the US government, and became the first person to serve as both secretary of state and national security adviser.
Kissinger advised a dozen US presidents, from Richard Nixon to Joe Biden. For advocates of realpolitik – a quintessentially pragmatic, utilitarian approach to foreign affairs – Kissinger was both author and master.
Kissinger had no qualms backing the military dictatorship behind Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in the 1970s. He supported the CIA in overthrowing president Salvador Allende of Chile in 1970, advocated sustained bombing in areas of North Vietnam, and encouraged the wiretapping of journalists critical of his Vietnam policy. He prioritised security over human rights, and commercial control over self-determination.
None of this was surprising. Kissinger’s entire approach to foreign policy was unsentimental at best, and brutish at worst. Peace, and the power to conclude a peace, could only be hewn coarsely from the unforgiving fibre of state relations, he believed.
To his critics, Kissinger’s actions in Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia and beyond significantly challenged his legacy of negotiation and diplomacy, and – in the eyes of some – were tantamount to war crimes.
His passion for foreign affairs never dimmed, commenting on the October 7 Hamas attack just a few weeks before his death.
For every one of Kissinger’s brilliant moves, there was a bungling countermove.
Comment: After he died there was a big story in the local paper. In it, Kissinger said he regretted promoting and causing the mixing of too many different races and cultures.