This was the key man in US foreign policy in the second half of the 20th century. First as
National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger
was considered for years as the public face of realpolitik, pragmatism above all else.
Beloved by some and targeted by others, his decisions shaped not only US foreign policy
but also the world as we know it today. Kissinger was one of the great architects
of the opening of relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China,
the end of the Vietnam War and the launching of peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt. A
process that years later culminated in the Camp David Accords. The first major peace
agreement between Israel and an Arab country. Well, on 27 May 2023 Kissinger turned 100 years
old... The reason why we, at VisualPolitik wanted to prepare this video. Regardless of our personal
opinions of Kissinger, he was undoubtedly one of the great players in international
politics throughout the twentieth century. Without him, today's world would look
very different. Maybe better or maybe worse, but in any case very different.
And that's why we want to answer a few questions with this video:
Who really was Kissinger and what exactly did he represent for the Cold War balance
of power? In what ways did he help shape our world? What were his great
successes and what were his big mistakes? Well, in this video we are going to answer
all these questions. Let's get started.
The year is 1969. The United States has more than 26,000 nuclear weapons in its inventory,
thousands of military bases scattered throughout Europe and numerous fleets
scattered across the world's seas. Everything is ready to fight against the Red Empire.
The Cold War is going through its most difficult years and it’s a time when the
world was a dangerous place. And we're not just talking about possible nuclear armageddon.
There was also the clash between India and Pakistan, the growing chaos in Latin America,
the decolonization of Africa and the Arab-Israeli conflict, among many others.
What’s more, the fall of Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union in 1964 and his replacement
by Leonid Brezhnev meant a return to a harder line and a pause in any détente.
Basically, we could say that the world had become one massive powder keg. Any spark could blow it
into a thousand pieces. It had to be avoided,
it was time to put on the brakes and reduce the tension... But the question is... How?
Well, in November 1968, Republican Richard Nixon won the presidential election.
It was then up to him to choose the new guide for international policy.... That's
when the Kissinger era began. But let's not go so fast.
The man we all know as "Henry" Kissinger was actually born Heinz Alfred Kissinger
on 27 May 1923, in Bavaria, Germany, just 10 years before Nazism came to power.
His family was German-Jewish, so the arrival in 1933 of Adolf Hitler to
power changed their lives forever. Nazi segregation measures gradually drove them
out of civilian life until finally, in 1938, when Kissinger was 15 years old,
his family managed to flee Germany, first to the UK and then to the USA.
Specifically to New York, where he would end up enrolling at City College to study accounting.
As time went on, he acquired US citizenship in 1943 and that same year he was recruited and
sent to the European front, where, thanks to his German language skills and local accent, he ended
up as commander of the Counterintelligence Corps detachment in the Bergstrasse district of Hesse.
Which, if you stop to think about it, was a pretty surprising turn of events.
Kissinger, who had arrived with his family fleeing Germany as a persecuted Jew,
had returned to his native country as a US citizen with the mission of fighting an open
war against the Nazi regime. Life's twists and turns... Yet the most momentous was yet to come.
You see, when Kissinger returned to the United States, something had changed in him:
he no longer wanted to study accounting. His whole life had been deeply conditioned
by political decisions and now his passion for this activity had
been irreversibly ignited. So as we say around here, no sooner said than done.
In 1950 he graduated with honors with a degree in political science
from Harvard University. A few years later he obtained his doctorate from Harvard University.
And so, little by little, he was incorporated into the circles that shaped the country's
international politics. Kissinger worked for the
Council on Foreign Relations, the State Department and the RAND Corporation.
However, the role that would bring him one key step closer to power was the offer he received
to work as a foreign policy advisor to the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller,
then governor of New York and opponent in the Republican primaries to Richard Nixon.
Kissinger was positioning himself at the gates of power...But he was not yet inside.
(A WORLD ON FIRE)
On 5 November 1968, Richard Milhous Nixon won the presidential election,
becoming the thirty-seventh president of the United States in a world that was anything
but a peaceful and quiet place. And no, I am not exaggerating.
If today the war in Ukraine looks like a conflict capable of shaking
the foundations of the international order, just imagine for a moment what the
situation was like at the end of the 1960s: The United States had already lost nearly
17,000 soldiers in Vietnam, the Soviet Union had decided to invade Czechoslovakia and the
Middle East was a powder keg after the Six-Day War and the triumph of Egyptian nationalism.
And let’s not forget that at the same time, there were thousands and thousands of nuclear
warheads capable of blowing up the world. As if that were not enough, the assassination
of President Kennedy, the anti-Vietnam War movement and the definitive struggle
against racial segregation were generating strong tensions within American society.
This, VisualPolitik viewers, was the context facing the new Republican
President Richard Nixon. After his election
victory, Nixon invited Kissinger to his New York offices to get to know him better. The
meeting must have gone very well, because just a few weeks later, Nixon offered Kissinger nothing
less than the position of national security adviser, the second highest-ranking cabinet
post that did not require Senate confirmation. The highest was that of the chief of staff himself.
Of course, the expectation Kissinger had stirred in Nixon did not seem to
be reciprocated. To give you an idea, this is what his former boss, Governor
Nelson Rockefeller, told our protagonist. ("He chided me for postponing my decision and
urged me to accept Nixon's offer immediately; when the president invites you to an important service,
he observed, delay is not an appropriate response. "Keep in mind," Rockefeller added, "that Nixon is
taking a much greater risk with you than you are taking with him." That same afternoon I
telephoned Nixon." – Henry Kissinger, in his book, Leadership: Six Studies in Global Strategy).
Today’s protagonist already had his place at the very pinnacles of power. This is when this whole
story really begins. Listen up.
(3 GOALS FROM THE TOP CORNER)
In August 1968, in the midst of the US election campaign, Leonid Brezhnev ordered a military
intervention in Czechoslovakia after this country, a member of the Warsaw Pact and led by President
Alexander Dubček, announced a package of reforms for economic and political liberalization.
This was something the Soviet Union was not prepared to consent to.
At that time the communist superpower was going through what Washington called the "Brezhnevian
Stagnation". The Soviet economy had begun to show its first major cracks and was no
longer able to keep up with the United States. Well, despite the invasion of Czechoslovakia,
Kissinger considered that it was the perfect moment to promote a rapprochement. His theory
was that the United States should not seek to make "wood from the fallen tree" with the Soviet
problems, but rather take advantage of the moment to bring about small changes.
This is what explains the visit of the former leader of communist Romania,
Nicolae Ceaușescu to Washington in 1969, and Nixon's subsequent visits to Yugoslavia, Poland
and naturally also Moscow on multiple occasions. And the truth is that this strategy worked to
some extent: relations improved and in 1971 the SALT treaty was signed
to limit the nuclear arsenal of both powers. Of course, the Cold War was not the only headache
in Washington. By this time the Vietnam War was already becoming a nightmare: a never-ending,
increasingly costly and unpopular war. It was clear that the United States had
to find a way out... But how? Keep in mind, by the time Nixon
was sworn in as president, the US had more than 500,000 troops deployed in
Vietnam. It was an untenable situation. That is why the new president charged his
cabinet to bring about the end of the war and the withdrawal of troops during the first term.
You know, he couldn’t let a little thing like a pesky war get in the way of his re-election.
By 1973, the conflict was about to come to an end... Something for which the Vietnamese
revolutionary, Le Duc Tho, and Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize,
although Kissinger did not accept it because he considered that the conflict was still ongoing.
It was not until 1975, with the fall of Saigon, that 20 years after it began,
this military and political disaster for the United States came to an end once and for all.
VisualPolitik viewers, his efforts to achieve a political thaw with the Soviet Union and
his role in bringing about the end of the war earned Kissinger a promotion:
And what a promotion! Without abandoning his post as National Security Advisor, Nixon also
gave him the post of Secretary of State. And so Henry Kissinger became one of the most important
figures in the entire history of US international politics. Few people have accumulated so much
weight in a cabinet. The new rockstar of American international politics used this to deploy what
is known today as "shuttle diplomacy". Triangular diplomacy. That is, seeking the rapprochement of
two hostile countries through the intervention of a third actor friendly to both parties.
Which was precisely the strategy Kissinger employed in the Middle East.
You see, 1973 – as we have already told you, was a very busy world – there was
also the Yom Kippur war, where Egypt and Syria launched themselves against Israel.
Well, Kissinger used this kind of triangular scheme to become the intermediary between
the Israeli head of government, Golda Meir, and the Egyptian president, Anwar el-Sadat.
And not only that. The new leader of US international policy also invited the Soviet
Union to the round of negotiations. Kissinger even raised the possibility of creating a UN force,
composed of both superpowers, to pacify the Suez Canal region. The idea did not take off,
but... US and Soviet troops side by side? Don't tell me the guy wasn't daring.
The fact is that the Yom Kippur conflict ended in 19 days, and the rapprochement between Israel and
Egypt promoted by Kissinger not only resulted in a ceasefire, but culminated in Sadat's visit
to Israel at the end of 1977, and the 1978 Camp David Accords under the Carter administration.
But... Let's recap: in just four years, Kissinger had achieved the exit from Vietnam,
a historic rapprochement with the Soviet Union, a very significant
nuclear agreement and, to top it all off, a ceasefire in the Middle East powder keg.
Not a bad result for such a short time... However, hold on a moment, because his great achievement,
the work that has probably changed the world more than any other was yet to come.
And yes, we are of course talking about China... Let’s take a look!
(CHINA, THE MASTERPIECE)
Do you know, it is often thought that the idea of closer relations with China was Kissinger's but,
in fact, this was a gamble that Richard Nixon had already advocated for years before he
came to the White House... Look at this: ("Taking the long view, we simply cannot
afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations… There is no place on this
small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.” "
"Asia after Viet Nam," paper published by Richard Nixon in Foreign Affairs. October 1967).
Kissinger and Nixon agreed on the diagnosis, but approaching Beijing was far from easy.
What would happen to the commitments made with Taiwan? How do you go about approaching such
a closed and hostile country? Was it really feasible to strengthen ties with Mao's China?
Well, let's just say that Kissinger's ace in the hole was once again "Shuttle diplomacy":
When Ceauşescu visited the US in 1969, Nixon himself asked him to
let Mao's government know that he wanted to establish talks between the two governments.
Keep in mind that, at that time, Washington was still recognizing the Republic of China,
that is, Taiwan, and not the People's Republic of China as the legitimate China.
The fact is that Washington's offer fell on deaf ears. That is why the following year Kissinger
asked the US ambassador in Poland to convey the message to the first Chinese diplomat he met.
[Not surprisingly, e-mail was not an option – how things have changed].
The opportunity would come soon after at a Yugoslavian social event, and as a result, in
December 1970, the first official contact between Nixon and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai took place.
This paved the way for Kissinger to make secret visits to Communist China
in 1971 to agree on the terms of the new relationship that was about to be formed.
("The secret trip was arranged by scheduling a visit by me to Vietnam, Thailand, India and
Pakistan. Once in Islamabad, an indisposition was announced that would explain my subsequent
two-day absence as a visit to a hill station to recuperate. The whole process - from Nixon's
conversation with Yahya Khan on 25 October 1970, to my arrival in Beijing on 9 July 1971, lasted
eight months." – Henry Kissinger, in his book "Leadership: Six Studies in Global Strategy.")
Shortly thereafter, the announcement of Nixon's own visit to China would herald a new era.
On 25 October 1971, the UN Security Council definitively recognized the People's Republic
of China (PRC) as the authentic China. Despite this, however, Beijing never
succeeded in getting the US to minimize its commitments to Taiwan.
In the case of China, Kissinger's position was that nations with firepower could not
live on the margins of the international system, diplomacy and the global order,
because isolating them would end up provoking destructive behavior. In that game, sacrificing
recognition of Taiwan was something that was, shall we say, acceptable.
It is the crude definition of what we know as realpolitik, a political strategy that,
like Kissinger himself, has as many admirers as detractors.
(HIGHS AND LOWS) The agreements with
the Soviet Union, the reconciliation with China, the end of the Vietnam War, the peace negotiations
in the Middle East... This is perhaps the best side of Kissinger's political gamble.
Other aspects, meanwhile, do not generate as much admiration. For example, Kissinger did
not hesitate to support different types of dirty wars and dictators in order to stop the spread
of communism in Latin America. ("Henry Kissinger turns 100:
the controversial Nobel Peace Prize winner who supported the "dirty war" that left
thousands dead in Latin America. – BBC) This one you are about to see, for example,
is a well-known phrase that Kissinger addressed to Argentine Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti,
chancellor of the military coup led by Jorge Rafael Videla that
had been perpetrated just three months before:. ("If there are things that have to be done, you
should do them quickly. But you should get back quickly to normal procedures." – Henry Kissinger)
It seems clear what he is talking about, doesn't it? Repression and
persecution. Realpolitik at its best. Also highly controversial was his
policy of expanding massive bombing of Cambodia and Laos to weaken the Vietcong
before sitting down to negotiate. Despite all this, a 2015 survey of
American academics lists him as the most efficient Secretary of
State in the last 50 years. Check it out. In the same vein, by the way, Kissinger today
advocates dialogue with Putin's Russia. But, be that as it may, one thing is clear:
despite his lights and shadows, and whether we are more or less in favor of this crude
form of international politics, in which anything goes – even if it means embracing
the world's worst regimes – Kissinger helped shape the world as we know it today.
Having said that, the questions are for you:
What do you think of Henry Kissinger's legacy? What do you think of his commitment
to realpolitik? Do you think his role was positive or negative? As always,
leave us your impressions in the comments and let's open a debate. And now,
if you found this video interesting, don't forget to like and subscribe to Visualpolitik
if you haven't already done so. All the best and see you next time.