Posted on 12/23/2023 6:50:33 PM PST by FarCenter
Henry Kissinger's biggest diplomatic achievement -- orchestrating America's opening to China -- led to a 45-year U.S. policy of aiding Beijing's economic rise which, in turn, created the greatest strategic adversary Washington has ever faced.
The costs of this approach included empowering a more aggressive and expansionist China and perpetuating Communist Party rule.
When strongman Deng Xiaoping brutally crushed a student-led, pro-democracy movement in Beijing in 1989 through the military assault that came to be known as the Tiananmen Square massacre, Kissinger opposed imposing sanctions on China.
"China remains too important to U.S. national security to risk the relationship on emotions of the moment," the former secretary of state wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. "The U.S. needs China as a possible counterweight to Soviet aspirations in Asia, and needs China to remain relevant in Japanese eyes as a key shaper of Asian events." He added a prediction: "China will exercise a moderating influence in Asia and not challenge America in other areas of the world."
By that point, Kissinger had accumulated not just influence with the Chinese leadership but also personal financial interests.
Shortly before the fateful events of June 4, 1989, he had established a $75 million investment fund together with Chinese state-owned group CITIC. In addition, his private advisory company, Kissinger Associates, had already then been working in China on behalf of American businesses for seven years.
More fundamentally, the flawed policy initiated by Kissinger led the U.S. to continue strengthening China even after the Cold War had ended with the Soviet Union's disintegration in 1991. By the time the U.S. began reversing course during the presidency of Donald Trump, its relative decline had already set in.
Kissinger's foreign policy was based on the rampant exercise of American power but was devoid of concern for human lives. Across large sections of Asia, Kissinger's legacy still rankles because of disastrous decisions that resulted in the deaths of countless numbers of people and destruction across vast regions.
As national security adviser to then-President Richard Nixon, Kissinger extended the Vietnam War by derailing a planned peace conference and ordered the carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Laos. The U.S. dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, twice the amount dropped around Europe and Asia during World War II.
Under the following administration of President Gerald Ford, Kissinger aided Indonesia's bloody invasion and occupation of East Timor as secretary of state.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, and U.S. President Joe Biden in June: Despite an improved relationship, U.S. strategic objectives still diverge from core Indian interests. © Reuters The corrosive legacy of this modern Machiavelli has long weighed on U.S. policy in Asia. Nowhere is this truer than in America's relations with India, the world's largest democracy.
Developments during 1971 had a profound impact on the bilateral relationship and India's strategic calculus. That year, the Pakistani military brutally resisted Bangladeshi efforts to seek independence, slaughtering up to 3 million people, holding 200,000 women in rape camps and forcing 10 million to flee to India.
Kissinger and Nixon were more than complicit in the Pakistani military's rampage. They provided political cover for then-military dictator Gen. Yahya Khan to continue the massacres. With the help of Khan's regime, Kissinger then made a secret trip from Pakistan to China in July 1971, paving the way for a Sino-U.S. rapprochement.
The opening to China thus came at a fatal cost to untold numbers of Bengalis while others were forced to flee to India. But that was not all. To try to prevent Bangladesh from breaking away from Pakistan, Nixon and Kissinger even urged China to take military action against India.
In December 1971, after the massive refugee influx led India to intervene in the final stage of the nine-month independence conflict, the U.S. deployed a nuclear-capable naval task force led by the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise off the southern tip of India in a show of force.
Winston Smith writing this piece...
Media brought down Nixon. They hated him. How do you expect them to rate Kissinger?
Very long article. Scroll down about 1/3 way for paragraph that starts with “In 1967” where Kissinger’s part comes in.
I think there will always be folks who see Kissinger as “not
quite as bad” as others do, and the others who are convinced
he was evil incarnate.
At this time, we have a massive amount of things on our plate
and very little time to address them.
Kissinger isn’t even in the top 50 right now.
This thread should get less than five comments.
No offense intended to the poster.
It’s now in fashion to kick China around after kissing up to China that’s what I see in this the kind of rewriting of history associated with Orwell and 1984.
You’re a Chicom operative.
Of course you defend China because you are loyal to them.
Re: 7 - another example of weak argument skills.
You can’t argue the point, so the other poster must a Chicom “operative” and “loyal” to them.
He was a great man and a great American. If there were a million mistakes he could have made and he only made 100,000 then that’s not too shabby.
No.
It has to do with his long history of posts and his even admitting it.
And you are defending Kissinger’s long time support of the Chinese communists? And his becoming a multi-millionaire via his decades long career as their agent via Kissinger Associates and other mechanisms?
He’s taken even more Chicom money than the Bidens.
The author of this article is a bit one-sided. He claims that Kissinger “extended the Vietnam War” by bombing Indochina, yet it was the bombing that finally brought the North Vietnamese to the peace table. As for the Subcontinent, he omits the fact that India was an ally of the Soviet Union and in 1971, the Soviets were making large shipments of munitions to India. He also says nothing about Kissinger’s role in halting the Yom Kippur War.
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