Pinochet was one of the few things Kissinger got right.
He was a foolhardy amoral Utopian. He would have fit in perfectly during the French Revolution. And he would have been beheaded.
Henry Kissinger represented everything that has been wrong with America in my lifetime. He passed away at the age of 100. Did he ever have a real job in his life?
It’s easy to second guess Cold War decisions, but it wasn’t — and isn’t — clear what the right decisions would have been. Follow a hard line and there were negative consequences. Pursue a soft line and there were negative consequences — maybe even more.
Kissinger was a transition between the hard line of Acheson and Dulles and the more mixed and muddled policies of later Secretaries of State, a transition too between the days of America’s global supremacy as World War II’s big winner and the more muddled world of today, when we no longer have that kind of power and confidence. He was bound to make mistakes. Everybody did and does.
The communists were defeated in Chile, and they became the most free and prosperous country in Latin America. Pinochet took on the task of saving the country, and then voluntarily stepped aside.
But current politicians will never admit the debt they owe him, and by extension, to Kissinger. Chile is not Venezuela thanks to them.