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International

Hero or Villain?

Henry Kissinger, former U.S. secretary of state and national security advisor, was responsible for the deaths of at least three million people - all in the name of the U.S. national security interests and anti-communism.

By Dr. Talat Farooq | January 2024


Henry Alfred Kissinger, extolled by his American admirers as a grand geopolitical strategist, fled Nazi Germany in 1938 to become an American citizen. As Harvard faculty in the 1960s, he was a consultant for the John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations before serving in the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as the US national security advisor and secretary of state between 1969 and 1977.

In the following decades, he continued to influence foreign policy by advising various U.S. presidents while sitting on several government advisory boards. He also exerted influence by authoring several bestselling books covering geopolitical, historical, and diplomatic topics.

He has been hailed for his contribution to détente during the late 1960s to late 1970s. However, while during the détente years, there were notable negotiations and treaties on nuclear arms control and improved diplomatic relations between the two Cold War rivals, détente failed in the last years of the 1970s. The two great powers remained involved in the Soviet-Afghan conflict throughout the 1980s with devastating consequences that continue to haunt the region.

Another achievement touted by his admirers is the role he played in mediating the end of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. But as the ongoing Israeli mayhem in Gaza clearly demonstrates, the Palestinian Issue remains unresolved primarily because of the U.S. backing of Israel. This American partiality can be traced right back to Kissinger’s years in office.

The U.S. opening to China in the seventies is perceived as Kissinger’s successful strategy and diplomatic victory over the USSR. However, this development created space for Chinese economic reforms facilitating Beijing’s participation in the global economy and eventually allowing Xi Jinping to take the competition to the next level. Today, China presents a robust challenge to the U.S. global hegemony and the post-WW2 Western World Order.

According to his biographer Greg Grandin, Kissinger was responsible for the deaths of at least three million people - all in the name of the U.S. national security interests and anti-communism. Kissinger played a key role in prolonging the U.S. military interventions in Southeast Asia, resulting in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians.

His Cold War era policies were a reminder of military imperialism - whether in Chile where a U.S.-backed coup removed the popularly elected Allende government, replacing it with the murderous dictatorship of Pinochet, or in Argentina where he gave green light to the homicidal military junta that overthrew the government of Isabel Peron.

Kissinger’s preference for militarism was demonstrated in the relentless bombing of neutral Laos and Cambodia; in the US support for violent nationalist groups in Africa and Latin America; in the empowering of dictatorships in the Middle East and Africa and in permitting Suharto and Yahya Khan to opt for militarist solutions to political problems in East Timor and East Pakistan, respectively.

Investigating Kissinger’s actions in his 2001 book The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens argues that Kissinger committed numerous war crimes. Yet he was never held accountable. Instead, in 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam- a pact that was promptly violated by all parties.


The fact is that Kissinger was responsible for prolonging and extending the Vietnam conflict to neutral Cambodia where later he did not denounce the brutality of the Khmer Rouge. Yet, a biased U.S. media presented him as an astute statesman even as he played on both sides of the U.S. domestic political arena. Writing for the Rolling Stones, Spencer Ackerman quotes Hersh Seymour to reveal the two-faced, deceitful nature of the man and his nexus with the powerful in the media:

Kissinger may be a hero to many in the United States, but outside the U.S. there are several states where the wounds inflicted by Kissinger’s policies continue to fester.

‘’Kissinger was the “hawk of hawks” inside the White House, but “touching glasses at a party with his liberal friends, the belligerent Kissinger would suddenly become a dove.” Media reporters who got inside information to their benefit, in turn protected Kissinger by not divulging either the full consequences of his acts or his own connection to them.’’

Those who support his Machiavellian approach, justify his crimes in the name of realpolitik. However, Kissinger was not a true realist. In fact, his foreign policy strategy was often influenced by neoconservative ideology that justifies the use of military force to impose American global hegemony.

Realism, whether classical or structural, does not advocate the blind application of militarist solutions to international problems. On the contrary, realism is about a prudent foreign policy based on reason and far-sightedness; it is about considering the limits of power and the long-term unintended consequences of a strategic decision being taken to protect national security interest.

The theory advocates clearly defined and limited national interest and maintaining peace in an anarchic international system through balance of power emerging from robust alliances. Small wonder then that many realists, including Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz, openly disagreed with U.S. military interventions in countries that did not present a direct military threat to the U.S.

Kissinger may be a hero to many in the United States, but outside the U.S. there are several states where the wounds inflicted by Kissinger’s policies continue to fester. In these parts of the world the former secretary of state and national security advisor will always be remembered as a ruthless villain.

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