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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27475 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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Henry Kissinger died today. I knew he was a popular punching bag for the left, but seeing the barrage of over-the-top reactions gives me the feeling that I’m missing something. My impression is that Kissinger was a brilliant diplomat who laid the foundation for total American victory in the Cold War. Even if you’re a bleeding-heart internationalist who thinks he’s bad for killing foreigners in Indochina, his role in normalizing relations with China probably saved way more Asian lives than he killed. What is the steelman “Kissinger is evil” position? What am I missing?

The argument is that Kissinger enabled genocides/mass murders in Cambodia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, East Timor, etc... and thus bears responsibility for millions of deaths.

I'm not sure how much I buy that argument. Kissinger generally reacted to these events with callous indifference and took the position that they shouldn't affect US foreign policy (see also, his illustrative remark about Soviet Jews: "If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."), but that sort of indifference is pervasive in international politics and Kissinger was mostly just crass enough to be on the record saying it instead of mouthing platitudes. While it doesn't exactly speak well of his moral character, attributing responsibility to him in particular mostly seems to stem from the tendency to treat the US as the only country with agency.

his role in normalizing relations with China probably saved way more Asian lives than he killed.

Almost nobody actually thinks in these sort of brute consequentialist terms.

I'd go further that Kissenger violated a number of ideological tropes and expectations.

Kissinger was a Holocaust surviving Jew (by narrow evasion of the fascists) who became strongly aligned with the American political right rather than left, a European who became an ardent anti-communist rather than a social-democrat, and thus something of a ideological/race-traitor theme which akin the progressive reaction to prominent black conservatives. He also worked directly against a common preconception/trope of a successful diplomat being someone who is supposed to avoid war at all costs and speak in universalist rather than national-interest terms. More to the point, he was a flagrantly ambitious and a publicity hound at various points, and so rather than quietly exist within the state apparatus or quietly retire to obscurity, he made a good part of his later-life about trying to be an elder statesman and defending his legacy.

That made him an active proponent of an otherwise often faceless machine, but also means that people's desires to anthromorphize broader collectives had an easy target to pin collective actions and policies onto, which has the effect of re-allocating responsibility away from less subtle actors in more flattering ways. It becomes a singular personal issue (Kissinger and his cronies were the cause of State Department anticommunist policy) rather than a broader trend (Kissinger was just the most prominent of an extensive line of anti-communists in the State Department who would have attempted by and large the same things regardless).

While there's plenty to criticize, I do agree that a good deal of the motte-expansive criticism of him rests on hyper-agency/hypo-agency distinctions. Very few Cold War critics treat anti-communists as having their own agency to commit atrocities rather than as American dependents operating at the direction of the Americans (and thus who would not have acted/been successful in their crimes without it). (And, by extension, anti-communists have no agency and commit atrocities; pro-communists have agency in resisting the US/west, and their crimes are brushed over as able. Who, whom, and all that.)

Edited for clarity of the memtic nature of the point.

That made him an active proponent of an otherwise often faceless machine, but also means that people's desires to anthromorphize broader collectives had an easy target to pin collective actions and policies onto, which has the effect of re-allocating responsibility away from less subtle actors in more flattering ways.

It's a bit like Klaus Schwab and the alt-right. People see big institutions doing bad things, and some sinister-looking guy gets up to the podium and says "Yes, it's me, I'm the bad guy. Look at my important title, I'm responsible." If you're willing to wear that mantle, outsiders will gladly heap superhuman agency on you.

Kissinger was a Holocaust surviving Jew

Not really; his family left in 1938

a European

Again, not really. He came to the US at age 15, graduated from a public high school in NYC and then got an accounting degree from the City College of New York.

became an ardent anti-communist rather than a social-democrat

Those are not mutually exclusive categories. It describes tons of people on the left during the Cold War, including LBJ, Scoop Jackson, and the Kennedys.

Fifteen years in Germany, especially the first fifteen years of ones life, when born to parents who themselves were born in Germany, typically makes one European.

Hell, he's named after a city in Bavaria.

Kissinger enabled genocides/mass murders

The US directly and intensively bombed Cambodia to advance his policies. It's not so much 'enabling' mass death, it's directly attacking other countries and killing their people, in the pursuit of a reckless and ill-thought out war with unclear and unachievable goals.

That alone wouldn't single out Kissinger for particular hate amongst other US foreign policy leaders during the Vietnam era, but he is. Nor would it explain why his critics hold him responsible for, e.g., genocide in Bangladesh

He wasn't responsible for the genocide in Bangladesh, but it's fair to hold him responsible for playing a primary role in knowingly aiding the genociders:

Kissinger was well-informed about the atrocities being committed by his allies in West Pakistan. In fact, on April 6, 1971, the US consulate in Dacca cabled a telegram to Washington in which the diplomatic staff expressed “strong dissent” to US policy in Pakistan and accused the country of carrying out a genocide in East Pakistan. The telegram expressed dismay over Washington’s refusal to “denounce atrocities.” Kissinger, therefore, was fully aware of the violence for which he was advocating support.

During the conflict, the United States provided Pakistan with arms via Jordan and Iran. Kissinger and Nixon supported this policy despite being warned in legal briefs from both the State Department and the Pentagon that such actions were illegal. Washington did not even ask the Pakistani military to refrain from using American weapons during the conflict.

Kissinger was desperate to see West Pakistan emerge as the victor. On December 10, he decided to send in the US Navy. Kissinger delivered a presidential order to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff commanding that the US aircraft carrier Enterprise be relocated from Vietnam, where it was stationed at the time, to the Bay of Bengal. The Enterprise was to be accompanied by nine warships and 2,000 marines...

Kissinger’s task force emboldened Pakistan’s leaders in their resolve to suppress the independence movement in East Pakistan. Pakistan’s president, Yahya Khan, even hinted to his colleagues that the American military would intervene. Kissinger had earlier urged him not to accept a ceasefire in East Pakistan, which would have prevented at least some casualties. Taking this, along with the presence of the Enterprise in the Bay of Bengal, as signs of a forthcoming US intervention, Khan extended the war by a few days...

despite having great leverage on the leaders of West Pakistan, Nixon and Kissinger failed to prevent the military crackdown in East Pakistan. And the two men really did have the power to influence West Pakistan’s leaders. When they had asked General Yahya Khan, in the midst of the unrest, to get rid of Lieutenant General Tikka Khan, a West Pakistani military man, from governing East Pakistan, Yahya Khan promptly did so. Kissinger and Nixon also convinced Khan not to execute Mujib-ur-Rehman, future president of Bangladesh, when a wartime trial was held against him.

The US certainly discouraged Indian interference in the Bangladeshi genocide of 1971. Since that was at the peak of Kissingers powers, that is one real genocidal accusation that he cant easily shirk responsibility for.

1971, the year of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, the treaty that marked the de-facto alliance of the Indians and the Soviets that endured for the rest of the Cold War, was the peak of Kissinger's powers over India?

This would seem to be another case of American hyperagency.

The US gave India over half a billion in direct aid and loans at the time, much more than the Soviets (though the Soviets provided more military aid ofc). He's reffering to Kissinger threatening to suspend that aid if India declared war on Pakistan, a pretty serious threat indeed.

Almost nobody actually thinks in these sort of brute consequentialist terms.

I would agree that nameless faceless third world (second world?) people being killed can’t be meaningfully compared to things that one personally cares about, but they can certainly be compared to other nameless faceless third world people being killed.

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