Opinions #49/23

What makes a great politician? In history, among the outstanding figures who formed states and nations, there are individuals who can be judged differently, even oppositely. Great statesmen or ruthless interpreters of unlimited power. From Julius Caesar to Alexander the Great, from Genghis Khan to Tamerlane and Napoleon, the relevance of their paths, in retrospect, depends on the size of the imprint they left on their time.

Wars and peace treaties, conquests and truces are inscribed in the victory column of the Great Decisive Day. He won because he consistently defeated most of his opponents in his era. The epic naturally anticipates an often-tragic outcome due to betrayals or exaggerated revivals, which cathartically sublimate the mythical dimension of Ours.

It is not the sudden death of Henry Kissinger, the impeccable former US Secretary of State who has just passed away at the age of 100, that escapes the rule. But it has significant variations. Henry Kissinger is recognized posthumously with all his qualities widely celebrated in the last half century: a cultured and sophisticated diplomat, a socialite and an unprincipled politician, an ideal candidate for the White House if he had not been born in Germany.

And above all, he is remembered for his role as the protagonist of a key phase of the Cold War: the rupture of the international communist front with the introduction of the American wedge at the most critical moment in the relations between the two red empires, the USSR and China. Kissinger, or rather the “great weaver” of the diplomatic web that prompted President Nixon to shake Mao’s hand in Beijing to isolate Brezhnev’s USSR.

If that wasn’t enough, this success was compounded by another: the end of the Vietnam War. A very bitter chapter for Americans, a harbinger of disappointments, protests, revolts of an entire generation that felt betrayed by the values and principles of justice and solidarity that they believed were carved in the American granite of Virginia Black.

The professor, who led American diplomacy after serving as national security chief, was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for it. A choice that was both criticized and controversial, given that the war was still going on and would have lasted for another two years. The protests were so strong, even among members of the Nobel Committee itself, that Kissinger never received the prize financially.

And to think that in order to conduct highly secret negotiations, Kissinger pretended to spend the weekend at home in Washington to relax, while he secretly flew to Paris, where, covered with the coat of the giant General Walters, he transferred from his plane to an equally secretly landing in France with his Asian neighbors.

Diplomacy at an epic level. However, after his death, the Kissinger legend must be vilified by critics. Big names and major American newspapers wanted to highlight the other side of the most respected Secretary of State in the history of the Atlantic. His choice, his responsibility, his cynicism, his contempt for the fate of the vanquished or those whom he considered already vanquished were remembered with the utmost precision. Thus, without mercy and without the hypocrisy that the obituary moment usually suggests, Kissinger is accused of bombing Vietnam, which eclipsed European countries in the number of bombs dropped during World War II. And then the secret invasion of Cambodia, the use of nerve gas in Laos, coups that led to military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. And many other similar episodes with his responsibility.

Harsh criticism that makes one think. The mainstream, which in recent years has waged information campaigns on Trump affairs, on tariff policy, on unlimited support for Ukraine, on challenging China over Taiwan, and which just a month ago ignored or ridiculed the anti-Biden in the person of Robert Kennedy Jr., seems to be reopening for itself the realism that made the American press great.

The shock was the ruthless Hamas attack on October 7, which exposed the Israeli government’s asymmetrical ruthlessness towards Palestinian civilians. A trauma that set in motion the critical spirit of politicians, intellectuals, scientists, and even White House officials. Suddenly the allies are also seen as they are, when they respond to the call of the wild, once again breaking the rules they have already broken. It is for this reason, and because of the progressive consensus that polls ascribe to the inconvenient Democrat Kennedy, that Henry Kissinger will now be remembered with so many gray areas, robbing him of recognition that he was a Great American. And not only because he was born in Germany.