Reopening old partisan wounds over the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger’s Nov. 29 death prompted unsightly denunciations from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), showing no class at all expressing his old hippie days of Vietnam War, antiwar protests when Kissinger served as President Richard Nixon’s National Security Adviser from 1969 to 1973, also serving as Secretary of State from 1973 to 1979 under Nixon and President Gerald Ford. Nixon resigned Aug. 8, 1974 due to his Watergate burglary scandal, leaving Kissinger to continue his duties with Ford. Sander blames Kissinger for carpet bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia and other controversial actions around the globe. No other secretary of state gets Kissinger’s condemnation because the president and Pentagon are responsible for U.S. war strategy. Yet for some reason Kissinger gets much of the blame.
Considered one the most brilliant foreign policy scholars coming out of Harvard University with his A.B and Ph.D., Kissinger academic work earned him high places in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, even in time of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy. Kissinger was one the scholars that pushed domino theory, subscribing to the work on the spread of communism by George F. Kennan. Kennan’s 1947 “Sources of Soviet Conduct” became Kissinger’s bible, guiding his foreign policy advice to Eistenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Ford. When it came to the Vietnam War, Kissinger believed in Kennan’s prophecy that if the United States did not challenge the Soviet Union all over the globe, the U.S. would eventually wind up in the belly of the beast. Kissnger gave Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) the rationale for the 1950s “Red Scare.”
So, by the time Kissinger had influence with Richard Nixon, he was zealous backer of the Vietnam War, but, more importantly, the Korean War the ended in 1953, battling North Korea, Soviet Union and Chinese Communist Party to loggerheads, eventually signing an armistice July 27, 1953, with neither side victorious. Less than 10 years later, JFK listened to Kennan and others, including Kissinger, pushing him to intervene in Vietnam where Ho Chi Minh was embracing Marxist-Leninism as a model to liberate Vietnam’s French colonial shackles. So when it comes to Kissinger’s views on Vietnam, he saw it, as Kennan did, as the latest battlefield to stop or at least slow the advance of Soviet expansionism. “There’s not much about Kissinger that I’ve heard that I think is particularly good,” said Rep. Doug Casar (D-Tx.) forgetting completely Kissinger’s background and contributions.
Above all else, Kissinger was molded as an academic observing the ravages of Fascism and eventual rise of communism, first in Russia and then in the 1949 Chinese Maoist Revolution. Kissinger advanced Kennan’s paradigm of containment, that the Soviet Union would have to be confronted at each-and-every place where it sought to control and takeover countries around the globe. When the Soviets were trying to take over Southeast Asia, Africa or South America, Kissinger advocated an implacable containment policy, challenging Russian expansionism, as Kennan said, wherever it turned out. So, instead of blaming Nixon, the foreign policy community blamed Kissinger while National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. Before that Kissinger had front seat watching Kennan’s battle between the Soviet Union and United States, between good and evil.
Kissinger kept working and relevant before his death at over 100-year-of-age. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was the 2016 Democrat nominee, consulted with Kissinger on foreign policy. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), locked in a heated battle for the Democratic nomination with Hillary, slammed her for consulting with Kissinger. Bernie had nothing good to say about Kissinger, blaming him, as a former peacenik, for the Vietnam War, with all its deaths to young Americans. Sanders acts like an old curmudgeon saying nothing respectful of one of the great minds in U.S. foreign policy history. Kissinger came up the ranks after WW II, when the Soviet Union took its revenge on the world for losing 28 million civilians and military personnel. Kissinger was a product of his times molded by Cold War’s atmosphere of spying and paranoia.
In the wake of Kissinger’s death, the country should show only gratitude for the architect of détente the Soviet Union and Communist China. Think about how ordinary U.S. citizens and American corporations benefit from Nixon and Kissinger opening up Communist China to U.S. markets. While there’s blessings and curses, think about how Kissinger and other Cold War adversaries made peace. Today’s foreign policy under 81-year-old President Joe Biden has turned back the clock on Kissinger’s Cold War progress. With the U.S. at war with the Kremlin and Biden threatening war with Beijing, the White House and State Department need a Kissinger. “Today, the world Henry Kissinger leaves behind bears his indelible mark,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in the Senate. “The nation he served—the global superpower he helped to create—owes him our gratitude.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
