Henry Kissinger; The creator of the American war machine or its product?

International Group Tasnim News Agency – Henry Kissinger who is one He is considered one of the most important and controversial diplomats of America and the 20th century. He died on Wednesday at the age of 100 after a long and tumultuous career.

During the presidency of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, he worked as the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor of the United States, and after leaving the American government in 1977, his opinions were still considered important in the field of American foreign policy.

According to some biographers, Kissinger is in the same stature as George Kennan, the main author of America’s successful Cold War containment strategy, as well as with other architects of the post-war world system. World War II is located.

He is considered one of the theorists of realism in the field of politics, and based on this point of view, interaction with the world was called “real politics”. (instead of moral ideas) believed: a view that prioritized the advancement of American interests regardless of its results and disasters for other parts of the world.

It is based on this. Kissinger has been accused of committing war crimes by playing a role in the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, supporting Pakistan’s genocide in Bangladesh and giving the green light to Argentina’s dictatorship in the “dirty war” against that country’s opposition.

The bombing of Cambodia, in which Kissinger played a role, led to the rise of the communist group “Khmer Rouge” and the horrific slaughter of more than a million people. After the US invasion of Cambodia, Kissinger completed peace negotiations with Vietnam that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize, but ultimately led to the humiliating occupation of North Vietnam just two years later in America’s worst defeat in a war to that time. and showed that this award was premature praise.

Kissinger also supported the 1973 coup against the pro-communist President-elect Salvador Allende of Chile and was indifferent to the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh. .

Nixon and Kissinger stood behind Pakistani generals as they sought to prevent independence for East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) and accused them of violating US law. armed, because they ignored the massacre and aggression against the Bengalis. Gary Bass, a political scholar at Princeton, later described the episode as “one of the darkest chapters of the Cold War.” Secret White House tapes and documents show that in internal meetings at the time, Kissinger disparaged those who “shed tears” for “dying Bengalis”.

Many foreign policy analysts believe that Kissinger’s policies during the presidency of Gerald Ford caused civil war in Africa and especially in It became Angola.

This American diplomat never regretted the consequences of his policies. Of course, he never paid for the pursuit of these policies and always responded with a mocking tone to the criticisms that pointed to his record in the fields of human rights.

However, Fans of Kissinger believe that the bright spots in his career outweigh the dark spots. According to this group, the achievements of this seasoned diplomat, including the initiation of relations with China and reconciliation with the former Soviet Union, outweigh the animosities that can be seen in his record.

They argue. that Kissinger’s policies are part of the cold calculations required when deciding on the survival of a nation, leaving no room for moral considerations. This group even says that if the United States pursued a more moralistic foreign policy, there would be more deaths.

However, its critics in books, television documentaries And many writings have said that Kissinger was not only a war criminal, but also one of the main founders of imperialist strains in American foreign policy, which put this country in a state of “endless wars” for several decades after he left power.

Determining what Kissinger’s ultimate legacy in foreign policy was is a difficult task that historians, foreign policy experts, and journalists have been trying to do for decades. About him, there has always been the question whether he should be considered one of the main founders of the American war machine or its product. Both views can of course be true in a way, from the point of view that this war machine brought him to work and he put the utmost effort in strengthening and modernizing it.

What is undeniable about Kissinger is that millions of people in Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile and many other parts of the world cannot separate his legacy from this war machine.

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