LyrArc Article Gist
"The whites are here to stay," a line in a paper prepared by Kissinger set the policies of the Nixon administration supporting Apartheid in Africa. NYT in this report on Kissinger points to his involvement of the US in the Angolan civil war on the side of South Africa as he did not understand the popularity of liberation movements. Kissinger was steeped in the Austrian and German politics of his original home country Germany from the Napoleonic period to 1914 covering Metternich in Austria-Hungary and Bismarck in Germany. He also failed to grasp the popularity of liberation movements in Indochina. As a result of these policies many many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, which cannot be said of Secretaries of State before him. Jefferson, Madison and Adams, and Seward for Abraham Lincoln, Elihu Root for Teddy Roosevelt, Cordell Hull for FDR, George Marshall and Dean Acheson for Harry Truman, John Foster Dulles for Eisenhower, George Shultz for Reagan. Kissinger served only for 3 years and the lives lost are incredibly large. We think of Geroge Marshall and the Marshall Plan that rebuilt post war Europe, Seward's role with Lincoln in the Civil War, and Cordell Hull's fight for freedom of Asian countries including India under Gandhi. And we can see why there are such strong opinions for Kissinger almost seeing Kissinger as a Napoleonic figure where power faced the hundreds of thousands of lives lost with complete indifference. There is the opening to China yet this happened simply because as a coincidence of events in China in 1970 after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution led to Lin Piao incident and China seeking a connection to the US more than Kissinger's own policy or plans. David Sanger's account of his conversation with Kissinger simply says he just "shut up and took notes." ...
"The whites are here to stay," a line in a paper prepared by Kissinger set the policies of the Nixon administration supporting Apartheid in Africa. NYT in this report on Kissinger points to his involvement of the US in the Angolan civil war on the side of South Africa as he did not understand the popularity of liberation movements. Kissinger was steeped in the Austrian and German politics of his original home country Germany from the Napoleonic period to 1914 covering Metternich in Austria-Hungary and Bismarck in Germany. He also failed to grasp the popularity of liberation movements in Indochina. As a result of these policies many many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, which cannot be said of Secretaries of State before him. Jefferson, Madison and Adams, and Seward for Abraham Lincoln, Elihu Root for Teddy Roosevelt, Cordell Hull for FDR, George Marshall and Dean Acheson for Harry Truman, John Foster Dulles for Eisenhower, George Shultz for Reagan. Kissinger served only for 3 years and the lives lost are incredibly large. We think of Geroge Marshall and the Marshall Plan that rebuilt post war Europe, Seward's role with Lincoln in the Civil War, and Cordell Hull's fight for freedom of Asian countries including India under Gandhi. And we can see why there are such strong opinions for Kissinger almost seeing Kissinger as a Napoleonic figure where power faced the hundreds of thousands of lives lost with complete indifference. There is the opening to China yet this happened simply because as a coincidence of events in China in 1970 after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution led to Lin Piao incident and China seeking a connection to the US more than Kissinger's own policy or plans. David Sanger's account of his conversation with Kissinger simply says he just "shut up and took notes." ...
