The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

HENRY Kissinger died a week ago. He was 100 years old. Major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post devoted several full pages to accounts of his life and many accomplishments.

In doing so, however, they also did not gloss over the immense resentment and even hatred he engendered in many parts of the world, especially those many nations not in Europe, the Middle East or East Asia which did not particularly interest him, nor to which he devoted any particular attention beyond what seemed to be required.

But this eminent scholar turned diplomat and consummate power player in Washington and New York also was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the Vietnam War, and remains the only person to have served as both American Secretary of State and National Security Adviser.

 After his death, he was probably most favourably recalled by state leaders in China, whose post-World War II political acceptance into the rest of the world was inaugurated and facilitated by Kissinger’s quiet diplomatic efforts – the famous “opening to China” - 50 years ago.

A widely-quoted biography notes that “Henry Alfred Kissinger (born Heinz Alfred Kissinger) was a German-born American bureaucrat, diplomat, and 1973 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the Richard Nixon administration. Kissinger emerged unscathed from the Watergate scandal, and maintained his powerful position when Gerald Ford became President.”

Kissinger, who with his Jewish family immigrated to the US as the Nazi grip tightened on Central Europe in 1938, made his early reputation at Harvard University, where his doctoral research led him to a fascination with the 19th Century Austrian Foreign Minister Prince Klemens von Metternich, whose name will probably for centuries to come remain familiar to even casual students of European diplomatic history.

Kissinger’s masterful account of the Congress of Vienna and efforts to restore stability in Europe after the revolutionary upheaval unleashed by the military success of Napoleon, A World Restored, may be the finest book of diplomatic history ever written in the US. The book gave insight into how to create long-lasting geopolitical peace from the chaos that follows widespread regional or even global conflict.

The peace brokered in 1815 by Metternich and others prevented another Napoleonic-style upheaval in Europe for an entire century, even as the forces of nationalism forged the modern states of Italy and Germany and worker revolts shook major capitals. In his book, Kissinger recalled Metternich’s tireless efforts as lessons that Kissinger saw as applicable to the period following World War II, when he was writing this book.

Attracted to and sympathetic with Metternich’s determination to maintain international order through big power relationships, Kissinger believed Metternich’s Realpolitik to be an appropriate template for navigating the natural tensions that emerged from the rise of the Soviet Union and later China after World War II. He is credited with largely developing and deploying the American policy of détente, a French word that has no single English language equivalent.

Détente became the watchword of American foreign policy leadership during and after the tumult of the Vietnam War, both in the US and elsewhere. Kissinger led the charge toward détente during his greatest ascendancy from 1969-1977.

But while this enigmatic, brilliant figure managed relations with the USSR and China with consummate skill, and also notably helped to broker a degree of peace in the Middle East after wars in 1967 and 1973 that substantially endured until Hamas shattered it two months ago, he also seemed not to care much about the rest of the world, except as it played a supporting role in great power relationships.

Most other nations didn’t really matter to Kissinger: The world order was set in Bonn (until 1990 the capital of divided post-war Germany), Moscow, Beijing and Washington.

“Nothing important can come from the South,” Kissinger is reported to have said to the Chilean foreign minister Gabriel Valdes at a luncheon in June 1969. When Valdés retorted “you know nothing of the South,” Kissinger responded: “No. And I don’t care.”

Chile is one of many nations that     particularly revile the memory of Kissinger for his influencing the American role in the overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected leader Salvador Allende in 1973.

Cambodia is another nation hardly enamoured of Kissinger. During the Vietnam War, Kissinger reportedly urged Nixon to bomb previously neutral Cambodia, ultimately shattering its monarchy and providing a chaotic context for the rise of the murderous Khmer Rouge.

Kissinger enjoyed his celebrity immensely during the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He became a darling of the society pages of major newspapers and magazines. His owlish appearance did not deter an astounding array of actresses, models and other beauties who accompanied him to glittering social events.

“Power,” he ruefully noted on more than one occasion to explain his appeal to beautiful women, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

As a boss, State Department and NSC staff recall him with little affection. He was well-known in both departments for receiving well-wrought analysis and recommendations from his most senior advisers, then dismissively returning the documents to their authors with the order to rethink and revise their work.

It was widely understood that he would only rarely even read a position paper when it was first presented to him. It gradually emerged that he felt he would be wasting his time on most papers until they had been laboriously reworked at least twice.

Kissinger also surrounded himself with a small coterie of trusted outside advisers, ignoring the career officials whose experience and expertise sustain most democratic governments. While this is not unusual in either the State Department or the White House, it was exceptionally pronounced under Kissinger.

Insiders still recall an incident that illustrates his disregard for “lesser” issues that might undermine his larger policy goals. For instance, in negotiations with the Soviets on new embassy sites in Washington and Moscow in the mid-1970s, Kissinger reportedly ignored experts’ concerns in his haste to conclude an agreement.

Even as the vital importance of interception of microwave communication was steadily increasing in intelligence work, a lofty embassy perch was best for clandestine monitoring of official communications. Nonetheless, Kissinger as Secretary of State agreed to establishment of the new US Embassy in Moscow on low ground near the Moscow River. But he allowed the Soviets to buy a site for their new mission near the Washington National Cathedral on one of the highest points in America’s capital city.

Any stigma from this modest subordination of American security interests to his higher strategic goals has largely missed Kissinger. After leaving government service over 40 years ago, he amassed a considerable personal fortune as a consultant to wealthy politicians, businessmen and even monarchs. For many years, Kissinger also wrote surpassingly readable and insightful commentary for the Post and Times on a dazzling array of international subjects.

He made a ceremonial visit to China just this past summer, where he was reportedly received with considerable affection and even reverence.

There is little question that this was a man of substantial consequence in the world, serving literally at the right hand of American presidents who were the most powerful figures on earth.

 But his legacy will always be mixed. One headline noted his passing thus: “Celebrity statesman drew acclaim and criticism.”

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to US Supreme Court, dies age 93

Sandra Day O’Connor died just two days after Kissinger at age 93. Hers was also an American life of great consequence, but with almost none of the controversy that surrounded Kissinger.

The first woman ever appointed to the American Supreme Court in 1981, she often remarked that “it’s fine for me to be the first to do something, but I don’t want to be the last.” Four women now sit on the highest US court. A female majority is likely in the future. O’Connor set a standard for grace and devotion to the law that will help to ensure that.

After 25 years on the high court, O’Connor resigned to care for her ailing husband. He soon died, and in her place George W Bush appointed Samuel Alito, whose retrograde conservatism helped lead to the many hard-right decisions the court continues to make.

O’Connor’s greatest wish in retirement was the removal of politics from American judicial appointments. It has not happened yet.