Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger died on Wednesday aged 100. Throughout his decades-long political career, Kissinger played a key but controversial role.
In the 1970s, he formulated a new China policy, leading to the establishment of official diplomatic relations between the US and China. He intervened in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War or the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, brokering a truce between Israel and Arab countries.
He was also a main negotiator of the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, also signed in 1973.
For years, criticism of Kissinger has been harsh. Some have accused him of prioritizing competition between the US and the former Soviet Union at the expense of human rights.
Indeed, Kissinger supported several authoritarian regimes for the sake of safeguarding US interests.
Former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet is an example. Throughout Pinochet’s rule, numerous political dissidents were oppressed and a great number of human rights violations occurred.
At the age of 85, Kissinger published On China. The book was well received, as many critics acknowledged his expertise on China and his meticulous assessment of Beijing’s ambition.
However, the book did not touch upon the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre and other civil rights violations.
Kissinger’s neglect was criticized in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
The New York Times review said that On China embodied Kissinger’s realist thinking, praised Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) way of ruling, and hence, was out of tune with the pursuit of human rights.
The Wall Street Journal review said that Kissinger wanted the world to forgive China for the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Kissinger’s intentions were questionable and confusing.
He was a realist. He did not care much about other countries’ domestic affairs. A country’s democratic status was not his concern.
For him, as long as the matter was in agreement with US interests, it would be a matter of his interest.
He did everything to ensure the survival of the US, including its status and economic growth.
Naturally, other countries — especially smaller ones — could be easily sacrificed in Kissinger’s schemes.
He even called for Ukraine to cede its territory to Russia after Moscow invaded early last year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy could not have been more upset.
Taiwan is another of the smaller countries that he did not have time for.
He arranged then-US president Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 and in the same year issued the Shanghai Communique, in which the US declared that “Taiwan is a part of China.”
Taiwan was sacrificed.
Hardly any diplomat is as controversial as Kissinger was. He gained acclaim and extreme notoriety throughout his life. He is celebrated as the ultimate realist who protected US interests by formulating a new set of diplomatic policies, but at times, he was criticized as a politician who renounced US values to protect its interests, including by disregarding human rights violations.
Kissinger had a tendency to sacrifice smaller countries to keep larger countries stable. A politician and entrepreneur good at manipulating political affairs in the international community — this would sum up Kissinger’s life.
Dino Wei works in the information technology industry.
Translated by Emma Liu
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