Henry Kissinger shuttled between diplomacy and controversy

Henry Kissinger’s heydays in office was marked by deep mistrust between India and the US as Washington’s support to Pakistan in the 1971 War brought a huge sense of unease to New Delhi.

Consequential yet controversial, decisive but divisive, Henry Alfred Kissinger who died aged 100 was the tallest United States foreign policy practitioner in the last six decades. 

 His journey, both personal and professional, was unusual for the course it had taken, sterling for its accomplishments including a Nobel Prize, and defining for the impact it had in shaping America’s domineering role in the geopolitics of the world.

But the path he had taken was strewn with secrecy, realpolitik, and above all guided by his abiding faith in the hegemonic prowess of the US’ power.  

For a statesman who could have had his way and sway in most things, he charted out to do or entrusted to deal with, it all could have been par with the course. 

 A Jew from Germany with half of his schoolmates and 13 of his family members perished in the concentration camp, Kissinger became a naturalised American citizen in 1943. He had served in World War II, earned a doctorate from Harvard on the diplomacy of post-Napoleonic Europe where he was also taught, and later catapulted into public service and the tightrope world of diplomacy.

Kissinger’s eight years in office under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977 saw the US exiting the Vietnam War, the longest foreign war fought by the Americans before Afghanistan, a détente with the Soviet Union which lasted and worked well till the Ronald Regan era, and calming the frayed nerves between Egypt and Syria on one side and Israel on the other.

His mission steeped in secrecy and indebtedness to Pakistan to open Communist China to the US and the West will remain unparalleled in his professional career.

A better measure of his significance lies in two facts — his advice was valued by US Presidents from John F Kennedy to Joe Biden, and Kissinger remained the only American who had direct access to all the Chinese leaders from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, though he demitted government office some 47 years ago.  

His diplomatic forays and projection of American power in Asia were problematic for India primarily because of his focus on building bridges with China and courting Pakistan. Kissinger's ruffling the feathers the wrong way didn't even spare Japan, the treaty ally of the US.

Nixon’s landmark visit to China which led to the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1979 is highlighted as an aspirational and ideal phase in the bilateral relationship.

An enduring marker of his role was what Xi told Kissinger last July: “China and the United States’ relations will forever be linked to the name ‘Kissinger’. I express my deep respect to you.” Though the US-China relationship was going through a new low, Xi met Kissinger at Villa No. 5 of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where the American met Zhou Enlai 46 years ago. 

Kissinger towards India

The US now finds India as a counterweight to China and both sides have comfortably confined hesitations of the past into dustbins of history to forge a relationship that spans all walks of life. 

Kissinger’s heydays in office was marked by deep mistrust between India and the US as Washington’s support to Pakistan in the 1971 War brought a huge sense of unease to New Delhi. In the backdrop of the Cold War and India’s proximity to the Soviet Union, the US diktats on many issues to India were bordering on hectoring.

As the declassified tapes revealed in 2005, both Nixon and Kissinger spoke about then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in unparliamentary language. In December 1971, India-US ties were dangerously frosty under Nixon’s and Kissinger’s watch. By 1974, when he visited India as the secretary of state, Kissinger spared no efforts to mend some old American attitudes towards India.

Then the shifting sands of diplomacy dictated by national interest had little respect for permanence. “Once one cut through the student, self-righteous rhetoric, Mrs Gandhi had few peers in the cold-blooded calculation of the elements of power,” Kissinger later wrote.  

The declassified tapes also showed Kissinger in the 1970s had referred to the Japanese as “treacherous sons of bitches” for wanting normal relations with China when he was national security adviser to Nixon. Japan established diplomatic ties with China in 1972, seven years before Washington restored the relationship with Beijing.  

Despite everything consequential he did, his share of controversy always followed. That goes well with the territory he occupied and the terrain he was tasked to scale while in office. Once outside office, his desire to have his place in history ensured Kissinger could hardly do inconsequential things, nor could he shun controversy.

(Jayanth Jacob, a foreign policy commentator, has covered the Ministry of External Affairs for more than two decades. X: @jayanthjacob.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.