Henry Kissinger dead at 100: RIP
What can you say about Henry Kissinger? A ton.
I won’t attempt to do that. Most readers here probably know quite a bit about the policies he advocated and implemented: detente, Realpolitik, rapprochement with China. He was a titanic figure in the middle part of the 20th Century, and his influence has been enormous. He was also more well-known than most people who have occupied his position, hated by many and admired by some.
Here are some interesting facts I hadn’t known before about Kissinger:
(1) His undergraduate thesis at Harvard was so long – over 400 pages – that it caused the school to set a length limit in the future.
(2) He originally thought very little of Nixon, but later they became quite close.
(3) After the fall of Saigon, he tried to return the Nobel Peace Prize he’d been given.
(4) At the age of 58 he had bypass surgery. And yet he lived to 100. The latter fact probably was related to his parents’ longevity: his mother lived to around 97 and his father to 95.
(5) Many people think Kissinger was the model for Dr. Strangelove, but he was not:
The [Dr. Strangelove] character is an amalgamation of RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (a central figure in Nazi Germany’s rocket development program recruited to the US after the war), and Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb”. It is frequently claimed the character was based on Henry Kissinger, but Kubrick and Sellers denied this; Sellers said: “Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger — that’s a popular misconception. It was always Wernher von Braun.” Furthermore, Henry Kissinger points out in his memoirs that at the time of the writing of Dr. Strangelove, he was a little-known academic.
(6) Kissinger seems to have been alert and in possession of his mental faculties to the end. For example:
In response to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and outbreak of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Kissinger said that the goals of Hamas “can only be to mobilize the Arab world against Israel and to get off the track of peaceful negotiations,” and issued a statement denouncing Muslim immigration into Germany in response to celebrations of the attack by some Arabs in Germany. “It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that,” Kissinger declared.
As for my own opinion on Kissinger, I think I take a middle position that pretty much agrees with this:
Ferguson states that accusing Kissinger alone of war crimes “requires a double standard” because “nearly all the secretaries of state … and nearly all the presidents” have taken similar actions. … He made life-and-death decisions that affected millions, entailing many messy moral compromises. Had it not been for the tough decisions Nixon, Ford, and Kissinger made, the United States might not have withstood the damage caused by [Jimmy] Carter’s bouts of moralistic ineptitude; nor would Ronald Reagan have had the luxury of his successfully executed Wilsonianism. Henry Kissinger’s classical realism — as expressed in both his books and his statecraft — is emotionally unsatisfying but analytically timeless.”
RIP.
My favorite Kissinger story is from comedian Mort Sahl, recounting a conversation he allegedly had with Alexander Haig :
Sahl : “It’s too bad that Kissinger wasn’t born in the US, so he can never be President”.
Haig : “Oh, Henry was born in the US”.
Sahl : “Then why does he have such a thick accent ?”
Haig : “Well, you have to remember that Henry’s never actually listened to anybody”.
Eric Haney, in his book on Delta Force, speaks twice of getting spun up to rescue POW from Laos. Each time, they were stood down.
It may be my reading,or it may have been an immensely delicate dance around the possibility each operation was blown from within US sources. He never mentioned Kissinger, but…there was something in the air.
That was after I’d spent a number of late nights swearing while watching Senate hearings on the POW/Missing issue on CSpan.
Maybe I was overweight when I read Haney’ s book.
RIP.
In the long run, the rapprochement with China didn’t turn out to be positive, but it’s not easy to see decades in advance. On the other hand, he was right in his last comments about the Middle East and about Europe’s disastrous policy of allowing Islamism to gain footholds across the continent.
I agreed with some of Kissinger’s actions, and disagreed with others. But I’ve always had a huge level of respect for the man.
Also, as others have pointed out, with Kissinger you never doubted that he had the best interests of the US in mind. That’s not the case with many of his successors.
The Wikipedia article mentions something I had not heard before: when Kissinger was negotiating with North Vietnam in 1967, his opposite numbers were two French men. Having served in a number of former French colonies, this has a ring of truth. On several occasions when stationed in Dahomey and the Central African Republic, I had to had to go to a ministry or the presidency to discuss matters with a senior government official. Those meetings were occasionally with French technicians (coopérants) who were assigned to those offices. They always spoke with total confidence that they were negotiating with the authority of the government. They never had to “check with higher authority,” or otherwise give any indication that they were not the person making the decisions for that office.
A French diplomat with whom I was good friends in Dahomey also pointed out that these technicians were the real ‘power behind the throne’ in the African governments where they served. He also pointed out that most of the ideologues in the government were graduates of a senior polytechnique in the south of France. Many of the coopérants were also alums of that school too. Small world.
If Kissinger had been Secretary of State / National Security Advisor in 1933, I wonder how he would have dealt with Hitler, Stalin and Japan up until 1941 or so.
Realpolitik – politics based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations – back then would have been a tough road to follow (though it’s no walk in the park today).
Ferguson states that accusing Kissinger alone of war crimes “requires a double standard” because “nearly all the secretaries of state … and nearly all the presidents” have taken similar actions. …
Something that Christopher Hitchens didn’t take into account when he was calling Kissinger a war criminal and, at the same time, backing the Bush-Blair Iraq War.
I had an enduring respect for Henry K when he dated Jill St. John.
The rest of the stuff, meh.
@Neo you can read that 400 page dissertation here. I found it enjoyable on the whole and regret not being able to see the cut parts, but I do find it somewhat creepy, especially his preference for Spengler and Spengler’s dream of the authoritarian globalist “world civilization”.
https://ia803000.us.archive.org/23/items/HenryAKissingerTheMeaningOfHistoryReflectionsOnSpenglerToynbeeAndKant/Henry%20A%20Kissinger%20-%20The%20Meaning%20of%20History_%20Reflections%20on%20Spengler%2C%20Toynbee%2C%20and%20Kant.pdf
Honestly I am less generous than Neo. I may take more of a middle position but it is harsher than Neo’s. I agree that he was a titanic figure in his time, and I also agree focusing on him in exclusion to others is hypocrisy, and he was far from the worst actor given the crimes of others like the North Vietnamese. but I do believe that even if one could set aside the moral calculus, Kissinger’s record was one of great failure and largely shame.
Some of this is only evident in hindsight such as the failure of the Paris settlement, but others such as supporting the Pakistani genocidaires in Bengal against India – thus being unable to prevent Pakistan’s defeat but giving us great shame in the process and alienating a valuable ally – linger with us.
Kissinger I find was a towering intellect, but I think one that got lost in airs about his own genius, sort of like Narcissus. He also was less decisive and more Buck shifting than people like. If one reads his writing I think it painfully clear what he saw himself as: as an American Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna, capable of wheeling and dealing to preserve his nation and its gains from the jaws of defeat through manipulation, diplomacy, and knowledge. But for all of Talleyrand’s many, many sins and failures he was a much craftier diplomat and man than Kissinger was, and I think he also understood the importance of both appearance and substance compared to Kissinger.
I have and will defend Kissinger on many points. I view attempts to blame him for the horrors of the Khmer Rouge to be downright disgraceful attempts to whitewash Hanoi, and I do believe the unflattering attributed quote about soldiers is not convincing and probably did not come from a man who served in the military himself and also idolized the learned soldier-aristocrats of the Baroque Era.
But on the whole I believe he was a net negative for the US, and both embodied and helped accentuate many of the worst aspects and pathologies at play in Foggy Bottom. I do not believe his extreme cynicism or “realpolitik” is all that practical not just in our age but also in the ages he seemed to envision it in, and I do think far more US diplomats accomplished more with a fraction of his time, access, and power.
But he had some admirable features like the attempt to return his Nobel. And it is a sad testimony he is better than most of what we have now.
Well kissinger got the same deal in 1972 that harriman offered in 68, he wasnt part of the negotiating team then
when Kissinger was negotiating with North Vietnam in 1967,
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Kissinger was not an official of the Johnson Administration.
My father was at the pentagon during the Yom Kippur war and I remember at the time he told me he thought Kissinger’s accent was fake.
I always saw Kissinger more as a Metternich than a Tallyrand, but either works.
There was a moral greyness in henry that masked opportunism as principle he didnt seem to understand that communism was something you cant compromise with so brokered details with gromyko with chou en lai and the like thd latters hands were caked in the blood of the cultural revolution
Ferguson states that accusing Kissinger alone of war crimes “requires a double standard” because “nearly all the secretaries of state … and nearly all the presidents” have taken similar actions. … He made life-and-death decisions that affected millions, entailing many messy moral compromises.
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That’s weak sauce. Kissinger during the VietNam War was an advisor to Richard Nixon. He was sent on diplomatic missions from time to time, but not one person in the Foreign Service, in the intelligence services, or in the overseas development apparat reported to him. The only members of the armed services who did were the few who were seconded to his 30 member staff. The situation in VietNam was one the Nixon Administration inherited from the previous administration. The notion he was a ‘war criminal’ is the issue of the pro-Soviet wing of our chatterati, who fancied it was a crime to oppose the Communists anywhere. (Christopher Hitchens tried to stick him with the bill for Indonesia’s tactics and strategy in East Timor, even though Indonesia’s actions in Timor played out over 23 years of which only one intersected with his time in office).
In the long run, the rapprochement with China didn’t turn out to be positive,
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You were expecting just what?
My father was at the pentagon during the Yom Kippur war and I remember at the time he told me he thought Kissinger’s accent was fake.
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Did you ask your father why Kissinger would spend 85 years faking his accent?
Henry Kissinger brought much needed depth and seriousness to foreign affairs.
Foreign policy is mostly the concern of the rich and sometimes idle, as well as the now metastasized professional class. It used to be done by well-intentioned amateurs. Kissinger came on the scene as the old guard gave way.
For example, Mexico in 1846 lacked a growing literate middle class and cosmopolitan elite. And thus they literally stumbled into the US War with Mexico, egged on by European debtor nations. Thus, Mexico failed to even respond to intense diplomatic concerns, raising international frustration which boiled over.
Good communications from Mexico would have stilled the war drive, then.
Kissinger’s stern realpolitik tells us that this cadre and class is necessary for maintaining popular government and preventing war.
Admired by some but hated by many, you say? The hate is loud and noisome. But I think your view is widespread.
Perhaps, even a quiet, silent majority of those interested in such things? Perhaps.
In any event, his death makes historian Niall Ferguson’s task of completing Kissinger’s authorized biography much easier. One volume out, a second one coming, and I believe a third one planned. Maybe more, as the historian ages?
Kissinger’s life was as enormous as his Harvard senior thesis — simply massive.
That’s not the case with many of his successors.
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George Will’s aphorism: “Inter-war isolationism maintained America was too good for the world; post-war isolationism maintained the world was too good for America” might apply to Cyrus Vance. Warren Christopher (like Dean Rusk) was a politically connected lawyer employed at the State Department for obscure reasons. Lewis Amselem (Diplomad 2.0) intersected with Hillary Clinton during his last years at the State Department. He said she actually compared favorably to the median attitude of the Foreign Service in her disposition toward the United States. John Kerry and Anthony Blinken are, of course, post-American.
Kissinger’s life was as enormous as his Harvard senior thesis — simply massive.
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A doorstop biography of the man has already been produced. He was a consequential policy maker for nine years, returning for temporary stints on blue ribbon commissions. His work life after 1977 was devoted to his consulting business (which he denied did any lobbying). His academic career extended over a period of about 15 years.
He was a truly impressive and consequential figure. I can’t really comment on the specific events he was involved in, but I plan on reading a biography at some point soon.
Turtler closes his middling but negative review of Kissinger with this: “it is a sad testimony he is better than most of what we have now.”
I’m thinking of the backstabbing John Kerry and the incompetent Blinken.
Hillary was just a grifting opportunist, especially compared to the intellect and visionary seriousness of Mike Pompeo — a star standout among Trump’s many disappointing high appointments.
Chases Eagles
Chases Eagles, or better said his father, is not the only one to make this observation. feeblemind comments at Maggie’s Farm..
Maybe Henry accentuated his German accent at times, but I suspect that some trace of a German accent remained. There were two German Jews in my hometown who, like Kissinger, had emigrated as teenagers from Germany before WW2. (One of them, like Henry, had graduated from George Washington High School.) They had some amount of German accent, but I can’t recall how strong they were compared to Henry’s.
The mother of an old girlfriend was in Henry Kissinger’s class at George Washington High School. She didn’t realize it at the time, but later found him in her old yearbook.
make this observation. feeblemind comments at Maggie’s Farm.. My brother-in-law met him back in the 80s.
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Can we hear from your pal Morty, too?
I’m thinking of the backstabbing John Kerry
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Many years ago Michael Kinsley observed that in Washington, a man’s reputation expands “like a gas” to fill whatever office he occupies. Underneath it all, Kerry is a partner in a two lawyer firm in Boston, the other partner being his sometime girlfriend.
Regarding the several comments above about Kissinger’s failure or success negotiating with the North Vietnamese in Paris, don’t forget that he was being back-stabbed by John Kerry during that process. Still makes me angry.
I actually have a Henry Kissinger story from college. I went to college at GWU, across the street and down the short block from my dorm there was a building known as “The F Street Club.”
Today, it is owned by the university. But, back then it was a private club often used by the political elite. One reason they liked it is because it is just a couple of blocks from the White House. So, if you have a meeting with the President you didn’t want to be held up by traffic and be late for your meeting, nor did you want to wait a long time before your scheduled meeting with the President by just chilling in the White House. So, as a member of the club (and Kissinger was a member) you would head on over to the F Street Club way before your meeting. Wait there, then head over to the White House just a couple of minutes before your meeting.
Well, one day I was doing laundry when my roommate come running to tell me to grab my camera. I did, and we waited a few minutes outside the F Street Club and Kissinger came out of the Club to be driven by his Secret Service detail to head over to the White House.
Kissinger, I guess always being the diplomat, shook hands with every one of us students waiting outside to greet him. He acted like a perfect gentleman and seemed to equally enjoy meeting us students as we enjoyed meeting him.
I don’t care what anyone thinks of his politics – I shook hands with Kissinger! As a freshman who felt lucky to be studying at a college in the heart of our nation’s capital that was such a cool thing to do. (I mean really it is almost half a century ago and I am still thrilled to tell the story!)
What also amazed me was the Secret Service guys, dressed in three-piece suits wearing dress shoes ran along side the car as it quickly (and I mean very quickly) got up to speed, then they jumped inside at the last minute. The whole time they were looking around to make sure there were no threats.
The whole encounter lasted less than 15 minutes (including waiting time); but, it was so cool! Unfortunately, I was so deep in the moment that I never did take his picture.
Even as a leftist I never got Christopher Hitchen’s animus towards Kissinger. Realpolitik is realpolitik.
Whatever K got right or wrong, at least he was clearly intelligent, more so than any Secretary of State I can think of since.
And he got Jill St. John. (I didn’t say that.)
Henry Kissinger mentored in the 70s at Harvard the young Klaus Schwab. Kissinger, Herman Khan and John Kenneth Galbraith were the highly influential figures responsible for the successful founding of the World Economic Forum.
Hitchens vs Greenwald – both are on the list of least stupid leftists. But they are “least stupid”. Never forget.
Henry Kissinger mentored in the 70s at Harvard the young Klaus Schwab.
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Kissinger was not a working faculty member at Harvard after 1968. Schwab was supposedly enrolled at the Kennedy School ca. 1966. Kissinger’s appointment was on the arts and sciences faculty.
Hitchens vs Greenwald – both are on the list of least stupid leftists.
IIRC, Hitchens was a Trotskyite as a young man, and Greenwald seems to have a soft spot for Mother Russia.
Ref mine at 12;14. “overwrought” not “overweight. Stupid spell check.
@T J
Seriousness maybe, though I find many of his actions and buck-passing to be quite petty and unserious. But depth? While he was a formidable intellect I cannot say he was a wise man, and so many of his policies were based on what I can only call a cookie cutter pastiche or caricature of what he thought previous times were, particularly the Baroque Era (while what I can only say overlooking it).
I disagree. Foreign Policy may be MOSTLY shaped by the rich and sometimes idle, but it tends to be a VERY wide and broad concern. Even as far back as the Ancient Greeks we have testimony of the Public speaking out to give voice about their anger or passions, and while a lot of those tend to be pro-oligarchical and anti-democratic sources intentionally strawmanning “the mob” there is a lot of truth to it. Even autocrats have to maintain the grudging acquiesce of their people.
They had the cosmopolitan elite, it’s just that they never fully recovered from the collapse of the Spanish Empire and basically lost a series of power struggles with rural caudillos. But they remained essential because they were the ones who knew how to run the major plantations and hte ports.
I’m sorry, but that sounds like an absolute load of crap, likely leavened by “Post-Colonialist” “historians” or Mexican Nationalists desperately trying to undercut Mexican war guilt and premeditation for the Mexican-American War, as per the usual narrative of the US as the Bad Guy of the Mexican-American War.
I don’t claim to be a great expert or specialist in the field, but I know far more about things like the Mexican-American War and the Texan Frontier Wars (more on that later) and Mexico’s 1830s civil wars than most. Which is why I know a few holes in this particular story.
While we can argue about Mexico “stumbling into” war with the US to some degree being the truth, that’s omitting so much of the story as to be misleading. – While Mexico and its military jefes in the North may not have expected or at least appreciated the difference between attacking Captain Thornton’s US army troops and attacking Texas Rangers or yet another Paramilitary, the fact is that they did so as part of a deliberate, long running, and incredibly violent strategy of frontier war by trying to wear down Texas in the hopes of eventually paving the way for its reconquest.
It’s also not like this happened so accidentally. Thornton’s small cavalry patrol was hit by about a regiment of troops under the command of what amounted to a Brigadier General that crossed the river*, and this was several months after the annexation of Texas was decided.
Moreover, it was followed up in quick succession by an attempt to storm Fort Texas by the Northern Army of Mexico.
That DOESN’T happen by accident, or by “stumbling.” Moreover, the fact that Mexico weathered several coups and political changes over this time (most famously with Santa Ana being thrown out of office in 1836 after losing San Jacinto on the verge of victory in his civil war, and then coming back about a decade later ironically with naive US help) but had their political and military classes remain hugely consistent on what was to be done about Texas and the Yucatan Republic speaks to a level of willfulness and awareness in policymaking that undercuts the narrative that this was something they “stumbled into”, let alone were goaded into by foreign loansharks.
So while the Mexican leadership may not have, in aggregate, expected the attack on Thornton’s patrol to lead to a wider conflict, and they certainly didn’t expect to LOSE said wider conflict and with it their vast Northwestern Frontier and formal title to Texas, they pursued consistent and violent policies that led to those outcomes knowingly and with fairly clear eyes and an almost unspeakable level of unity among otherwise ambitious, quarreling, and disparate political factions.
The truth is fairly simple. Mexico’s major bureaucratic and military leadership – in partnership with the major landowners in and around the Valley of Mexico – engaged in a policy of centralization, rolling back the promises of federalization and civil rights that their citizenry and the public had. This sparked a series of conflicts in the late 1820s and especially the 1830s, the latter of which is notable because it saw basically something like a fourth of Mexico secede from Santa Ana’s control (after he took power promising to fight for freedom from the Previous dude, and actually getting a favorable series of mentions as a fighter for Freedom by the Texan Founding Fathers in the Turtle Bayou resolutions. Oops.).
Texas and Yucatan were notable for being different culturally and ethnically from most of the other Mexican states, but in 183X they were just two that were rebelling. They also just so happened to be the ones that survived after the hat trick of defeating Santa Ana in 1836 and sending him home in exchange for a peace treaty recognizing Texan independence, but which a new strongman in the Ciudad rejected and which it is clear Santa Ana never intended to honor. Which meant that while we tend to view the Alamo and San Jacinto as almost the end all to be all of Texas’s struggle for independence, it was actually just the early climax of a brutal, long running war. One that every Mexican government (and to be fair also every Texan government) continued to pursue.
The Mexican leadership may have been heartened by prodding or goading from “European debtor nations” but I frankly do not think it had much of an effect on their decision making since they continued the policy as before.
In this context, “Good Communication” was not only relatively well established to the degree it was, but would I think have frankly not at all been useful.
Because what pray tell does anyone think Good Communication would have entailed?
“You shot our soldiers! Were they even on your side of the river?!!?”
“SCREW YOU PENDEJO! THE ENTIRE RIVER IS OUR SIDE OF THE RIVER! TEJAS ES MEXICO.”
Messages Received, Loud and Clear. That’s what “Good Communication” would get you, in a nutshell. As the Texan Republican Government found out time and again.
Because the two sides held fundamentally incompatible stances, and “good communication” wasn’t going to magically change that. Texas wanted to be either independent or annexed to the US. The US broadly wanted similar. Mexico (and especially Mexico’s Centralists who held power throughout this period, albeit under different and often conflicting leaders) believed Texas should be reannexed into Mexico, and the Centralists in particular believed they did not need to mitigate their behavior or address concerns the Texans or Yucataners had because they did not see themselves as accountable to them (had the “Liberals”/Federalists in Mexico managed to hold power for longer than a very brief time they’d probably have been more happy to make concessions, but they would still have upheld Mexican sovereignty over Texas)..
* This is also why while I am a great admirer of Lincoln, the Mexican-American War is frankly one of the areas I disagree with him the most on and I blame some of his polemics on the matter for the kind of “Poor, VIctimized Mexico” narrative of the war that’s become popular. The “Spot Resolution” was irrelevant grandstanding because the Mexican leadership did not see a difference between one side of the river or the other.
Any serious or in-depth analysis of the origins and conduct of the Mexican-American War has to deal with the Wars of the 1830s and the wars Mexico’s central government waged against Yucatan and Texas through the 1830s and into the 1840s leading up to annexation and ultimately the start of the war. It also has to address not just the individual personalities of the politicians on both sides (and not just Santa Ana) but also their common policies and beliefs, especially regarding the war.
And if you haven’t heard about all this stuff, that’s because there are remarkably few serious treatments of the Mexican-American War in my opinion..
It may be necessary for maintaining popular government or preventing war, but it is not Sufficient to do so. And to the extent that they existed in Mexico, they mostly had political and economic grievances against the Centalista dictators that ruled the country in that time and their misrule, but they did not fundamentally disagree with their conception of Mexican territory (especially given how the North seemed to offer a rare hope for settlement off the haciendas) and fell in behind them.
We also see how these people engaged in similar rushes to war in support of the likes of Bismarck and quite a few others, and in fact basically helped pressure Napoleon III into the Franco-Prussian War where he was reluctant to do so.
Unsurprisingly. Because while the grounds for hatred are often exaggerated and I will defend Kissinger where I believe the situation merits, the fact is he often did not. For starters, there were few decisive foreign policy or political initiatives he championed that led to favorable outcomes for the US, especially in the long run or with hindsight like Nixon going to China. He also blundered egregiously, as I keep bringing up regarding 1971 and India.
Finally, he thrived on lack of accountability, serving as the “grey eminence” with unaccountable and unofficial but vast influence in the foreign policy establishments. He was not a cartoon villain regardless of how many people want to turn him into one, but he was also not the stunningly brilliant and worldly “elder statesman” he liked to present himself as.
Agreed there.
@IrishOtter49
Agreed, which is also why I find it not at all surprising Metternich was one of the other “elder statesmen” he endorsed. They also had a similar track record in being cerebral, morally “ambiguous” elder statesmen with a statist, authoritarian leaning and who all but weaponized their ability to be boring and haughty in person. He shot for what he viewed Talleyrand was but wound up as something closer to Metternich, while ignoring how Metternich’s career ended in disgrace and failure after Greece.
And even then I do believe he largely fell short of even Metternich, who at least had definitive power in government and was a much more effective statesman. But then Metternich also was much more willing to accept official roles and official accountability than Hank was.
I’m sure the accent was genuine. Anyone who arrives in a new country and learns the language after age 11 or so will never entirely lose the accent. Of course some are better than others, or try harder, at getting close to the native pronunciation. Kissinger may not have tried that hard, but it’s unlikely he would have ever been able to sound American-born.
…the luxury of his [Ronald Reagan’s] successfully executed Wilsonianism
I’m not sure if I agree with this, based on Wiki’s Wilsonianism page. Whatever it is seems rather nebulous. I don’t recall USA being involved in any major wars in the Reagan years.
https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Wilsonianism
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My favorite Kissinger story…Haig : “Oh, Henry was born in the US”….
Born in 1923, he was “A Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938” per Wiki.
https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Henry+Kissinger
@IrishOtter49 > “I always saw Kissinger more as a Metternich than a Tallyrand”
There is an old popular song that my sister and I liked to do, back when singing around the family piano was still a thing (yes, I’m that old), titled “I wonder who’s kissing her now.”
Although the lyrics are not a perfect match for the question of Henry’s priorities, his sometimes opaque (to the public) shifts in policy did lend credence to the pun:
“I Wonder Who’s Kissinger Now?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wonder_Who%27s_Kissing_Her_Now
The discography will allow you to listen to your favorite troubadour.
Not sure eleven years old IS the precise cut-off age for being able to speak one’s new language without an accent…
but it’s approximately that age.
Henry K. was about 15 when he arrived in the US and, as was mentioned above, would have been too old to easily pick up “unaccented” American English.
His younger brother, however—about twelve at the time of their arrival, IIRC—did manage to speak “unaccented” English…
…taking into account that “unaccented” in his case meant a pronounced New Yawk accent (or one of the boroughs thereof)…
…so one’s mileage may vary…
Hitchens definitely had a chip on his shoulder with regard to Kissinger,
being an earnest Trotskyite and all (not to mention an avid—professional?—contrarian(!)). To be sure, K. was a lightning rod to such seekers of perfection…
I don’t know if Hitchens changed his views of K. following the former’s “conversion”, thanks to Saddam Hussein, to a pronounced non-Trotskyite (for want of a better term—“reasonable”? “humane”?) position.
I would imagine it’s entirely possible…
Overweight vs. Overwrought …
Not sure these are mutually exclusive, though.
(Saying this as a member in good sweating of Wrought-Watchers for over 30 years…)
Hitchens was always a bit of a nut, and never stopped shilling for Hanoi and its crimes. I personally am not a fan of Kissinger or his actions in Indochina but Hitchens liked whitewashing the likes of the Viet Cong until the end.