Must-read: Jonathan Kirshner: “Machinations of Wicked Men”

Must-Read: May I say that I do not understand what the entire point of labeling Henry Kissinger an “idealist” would be?

Of course, I also do not understand what the point of the idealist-realist divide is. Everyone has hopes for a better world, and reaches for them. Everyone has to grapple with the world as it is.

The true divisions among international relations specialists are, I think, twofold:

1. The division between those who are being smart and those who are being stupid.

2. The division between (i) those who believe that international relations is non-cooperative zero sum and that one’s purpose is to advance the interests or one’s own nation-state or ethnolinguistic grouping; and (ii) those who believe that international relations is cooperative and positive-sum and that trust via favors with the hope of their subsequent return via gift-exchange is worth building.

Smart vs. stupid; and nationalist vs. cosmopolitan.

Kissinger is, I think, an often- (as in his Nuclear Weapons and American Foreign Policy) but not always-stupid nationalist.

Jonathan Kirshner: Machinations of Wicked Men: “[Niall Ferguson’s] central claim—Kissinger the idealist—is… wrong. Simply, plainly, fundamentally, and exactly wrong…

…Do we really need nearly a thousand new pages on Kissinger, and on that part of his life before he joined the Nixon White House?… Much of it is drudgery, as the book also has the tiresome habit of abandoning the narrative thread to introduce ad hominem attacks and petty, provocative asides…. Even for a commissioned biography, the rose-tinted presentation of Kissinger presents a new standard…. Ferguson acknowledges that Kissinger was ‘reputed to be arrogant,’ but chooses to emphasize instead, at length, Henry’s devotion to his dog. The book reads as if no slight against Kissinger, real or imagined, might go unanswered….

Classical realism… sees international politics as characterized by the clash of interests… is properly associated with a brooding, deeply pessimistic streak based on assumptions about humanity’s enduring potential for barbarism, the looming danger of war, and other hazards smoldering just below a thin crust of civilization…. With Morgenthau, Kissinger dissents from the ‘can-do’ idea that science, progress, and problem solving can overcome the perennial and intractable clashes of international politics. Alongside Kennan, Kissinger bemoans the foreign policy practice of democracies and especially of the United States, with its tendency to swing wildly between under-attentive naïveté and overzealous crusading. Both are perceived as dangerous, and neither well suited to advance the national interest. This is classical realism….

Kissinger betrayed the trust of Humphrey’s men, passing on information to Nixon’s camp about the Paris peace talks between Washington and Hanoi. Nixon was concerned that a breakthrough at the talks might be an ‘October surprise’ that would cost him the close election, and evidence shows that Nixon indeed attempted to undermine those talks. Ken Hughes’s Chasing Shadows (2014) is the best account of this sordid affair. Ferguson addresses this affair with a diversion, arguing vociferously that the information Kissinger passed along didn’t amount to much. But these claims are irrelevant in taking the measure of the man. Kissinger proved his value to Nixon by taking such outrageous, and, it must be said, shameful risks…. He named Kissinger his national security advisor, and Rocky handed him a $50,000 check (equivalent to $325,000 today) as a parting gift….

Isaacson records that… ‘at least thirteen close relatives of Kissinger were sent to the gas chambers or died in concentration camps,’ including his father’s three sisters. Ferguson describes in detail how as a young American GI, Kissinger arrived at the Ahlem concentration camp: ‘Wherever they turned, the incredulous soldiers encountered new horrors.’ About thirty years later, discussing with Nixon the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union, Kissinger volunteered, ‘If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.’ Maybe.