Henry Kissinger RIP

speak no ill of the dead

I’ve been reading the obituaries on Henry Kissinger this week. And I must say that I am shocked. I thought the rule was Rest in Peace, and speak no evil of the dead.

But no. There are clearly a lot of people really pissed off about Henry Kissinger. There are lefties enraged about the bombing of Cambodia during the early Nixon administration. There are righties outraged that Kissinger got the globalist movement going and sponsored WEF honcho Klaus Schwab, and were not shy about noting that Klausi’s father ran a manufacturing company that manufactured flamethrowers for Hitler in World War II.

Then there was the far-right-wing fascist coup led by August Pinochet against socialist Salvador Allende in Chile. Lefties think that Kissinger had a hand in that.

And there are others that complain that Kissinger’s opening to China set up the whole process of low wages in the US that has cratered the middle class.

And did you know that Kissinger and Nixon bad-mouthed each other behind the other’s back?

I am reminded of the great line by Falstaff:

Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

My favorite Kissinger story is right there in La Wik.

During the American advance into Germany [in 1945], Kissinger, though only a private (the lowest military rank), was put in charge of the administration of the city of Krefeld because of a lack of German speakers on the division's intelligence staff. Within eight days he had established a civilian administration.

And how old was Kissinger? He was 20 or 21 years old. Go figure.

Of course, I am busy reading a bunh of books by Kissinger, including On China, Leadership, and Diplomacy.

I guess if there is one thing to “get” about Kissinger is that he was a German Jew that lived in the shadow all his life of the horror of the aggressive nationalism and antisemitism of Literally Hitler.

And I suspect that’s the way to understand Klaus Schwab and George Soros. After World War II these central Europeans figured: anything but nationalism. And so they all set to work to create a supra-national world order.

Only, as far-right-literally-Hitler British politician Enoch Powell — he of the Rivers of Blood speech — said, the supra-national idea cannot work because the supra-national institutions have no demos, no people. The point about a nation is that it represents a demos, a people that thinks of itself as one identity. The problem with globalist institutions is that they represent the global educated elite, and the global elite has a rather different world view and understanding of the world than the ordinary commoner middle class, in each nation in the world.

The great contriution of Henry Kissinger was as a diplomat in the hot phase of the Cold War. Reading his books I am struck by his constant focus on how to defuse potential conflict, because of the danger of nuclear war.

I wonder if we are becoming too blasé about nuclear war after nearly 80 years since the Nakasaki/Hiroshima bombs. Would Nixon and Kissinger have allowed the Russia-Ukraine war to go ahead back in the 1970s? My guess is that western leaders back then would have been terrified of starting a nuclear war by backing a hot war against Russia.

There is an old saying: “cometh the hour, cometh the man.” So when we needed Nixon and Kissinger in the 1970s to defuse the COld War they were there. And when we needed Reagan to win the Cold War without firing a shot, he was there.

So maybe the reason we have komplete klots like Biden & Co. in charge today is that we don’t need competence because there is no real crisis. Not yet.

The fact is that war, diplomacy, politics is all War World. And what we need is less War World and more Market World.

But then what would the politicians and activists and diplomats do then, poor things?