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Briefly, On Henry Kissinger
The good, bad, and ugly of the very long and very impactful life of Henry Kissinger is in the books. We should read it very carefully.
Henry Kissinger long ago passed from being a mere mortal man to being an avatar for debate. Having now finally shuffled off his mortal coil at the age of 100, the debate over who and what Kissinger was, did, and represented will be an academic exercise for another hundred years.
Skipping the grave dancing of social media and without rehashing the entire Cold War that defined the peak of Kissinger’s influence and power, instead we can have a more productive discussion about how we got Henry Kissinger in the first place.
How did one man get so much power, fame, and influence that two Presidents of the United States let him wield almost unilateral authority over foreign policy during such turbulent times? We know the answer is a mix of Kissinger’s own political abilities combined with a legendarily ruthless approach to getting and keeping his own hands on the levers of power. He took advantage of Nixon’s fall and Ford’s weak tenure to do so. Kissinger became a walking example of “the great man” theory in his own time, and parlayed it into an even longer career of advising, pontificating, and talking about just how great he was…
