Whenever someone seriously important dies, there is a rush by everyone with even the slightest connection to the deceased to file a “My [Insert VIP Name Here] story”. I usually get a hearty snicker, or even a sneer, out of these, because the hapless hanger-on/spiritual remora involved almost invariably inflates an utterly trivial encounter into a thousand-word nothing-burger or else makes a complete ass out of her/himself by claiming to be an actual “friend” of the deceased, when it’s obvious to everyone but the hapless “pal” that the deceased regarded them as, at best, a briefly useful though insufferably tedious idiot, to be discarded at the earliest feasible moment. Well, Henry and I were not best buds. In fact, we never exchanged a single word. But I did listen to him talk for two hours, and this is the story of that.
Way back in 1988 I was a reporter of sorts, covering an address by Henry to the National Governors’ Association in DC, a fairly remarkable event with all fifty state governors present. Henry was of course the star. Indeed, there was no one else on the program. Fast forward to 1991, and I was at some sort of DC confab and “found myself” seated next to the executive director of the NGA. I happened to remark on Henry’s speech, and the guy said, in an awed tone, “You know, I was on the dais with him, and he spoke for two hours without a single note!” “Yes,” I said, not skipping a beat, “and everything he said was wrong.” “Well, that’s true,” he replied. “But he did speak without a note!”
For, in fact, Henry did get it “all wrong”, for what he did for two hours was talk unrelenting trash about the possibility of reaching any sort of lasting agreement with that cunning, bald-faced liar, that unrepentant commie devil, that fiend in human form Mikhail Gorbachev. Henry’s inaccuracy, though profound, was not, I must say, his “fault”. Henry’s willingness to deal with anyone as unsentimental himself—a quality that I think he valued above all things—to be a “homme du monde” was everything to him—horrified the moralizing Reagan right, who all but drove him out of town back in the Jerry Ford years, and Henry knew that if he wanted to be even marginally acceptable to the (hopefully) incoming Bush administration, he had to toe the line, had, indeed, to be purer than Caesar’s wife—though purity was never Henry’s strong point—and at the NGA gathering Henry crooked the (hopefully) pregnant hinges of his knee to the forces, and prejudices, of the right as best he could. And we all know how that turned out.
So that’s it, the “truth”—my truth—about Henry Kissinger. I’ve read about a dozen takes on Henry since his death, and I think Mark Joseph Stern does the best job over at Slate. I myself have been writing “withering” takedowns of Henry for the past fifteen years. But I wish all the well-placed chin strokers within the confines of the Beltway had at least a few ounces of Henry’s brand of Metternichian Weltpolitik when it comes to both Russia and China. Yes, we should defend Ukraine but we should not insist on its complete territorial integrity (and we should most definitely not demand the return of Crimea, which should never have been a part of independent Ukraine in the first place), nor should we send Ukraine any weapons more “sophisticated” than the ones we have already supplied. In fact, we have gone a bit too far down that road already.
We should also not guarantee the independence of Taiwan, and instead leave that “question” without an answer. The Biden administration is already dangerously “hard nosed” (and stupid) with regard to China. Russia and China are both powerful and disagreeable, but they are not leading anything with the least pretense of being a world “revolution”. All they ask is that the U.S. drop its claim to be law giver to all the nations—to stop confusing ourselves with Yahweh, in other words—and accept limits to our power. Of course, to 90% of the well-placed chin strokers in DC, aka “the Blob”, this thought is literally “unthinkable”, so they can do no else but respond with the uncomprehending rage of a thwarted Don Giovanni: “Finiscila! Non soffro opposizioni!”
