Not sure these are mutually exclusive, though.

(Saying this as a member in good sweating of Wrought-Watchers for over 30 years…)

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…

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.

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

I always saw Kissinger more as a Metternich than a Tallyrand, but either works.

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.

Henry Kissinger brought much needed depth and seriousness to foreign affairs.

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).

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.

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.

For example, Mexico in 1846 lacked a growing literate middle class and cosmopolitan elite.

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.

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.

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..

Kissinger’s stern realpolitik tells us that this cadre and class is necessary for maintaining popular government and preventing war.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Agreed there.