In honor of Henry Kissinger s recent passing, we're taking a look back at his life and legacy. We're joined by the Prudentialist Oren Cass to discuss his life, his legacy, and what it means to remember him through the lens of history and time.
00:01:01.240He's hated by a lot of people on the left and the right.
00:01:04.740And I think it was important to take a look at who Henry Kissinger is and a little bit of his history.
00:01:10.060Because I do think there's a lot of controversy.
00:01:11.800I do think there's a lot to dislike there.
00:01:13.800But I do think he's also a very important guy who played a critical role in shaping the world that we look at today, the world order that we're trying to understand today.
00:01:23.500And so it behooves us to take a moment and look at his legacy and understand a more complicated legacy that has been left by his passing.
00:01:33.600Luckily, one of your favorite co-hosts is a foreign policy wonk and he's a devotee of Kissinger's writings.
00:01:41.880And so today I will be joined, of course, by the Prudentialists.
00:01:47.880I was driving home from church that Wednesday evening and I saw my timeline filled with the finally memes of all of the death and the Henry Kissinger and the claw machine.
00:01:58.800And yeah, no, I think it's important that we discuss him.
00:02:01.920For a man that lived as long as he did and had such an outstanding influence on America's foreign policy, it is very important for us to sort of look at him not through the moral lens that we often ascribe our current foreign policy elite,
00:02:15.400but as a man contextualized in history and time.
00:02:19.220Yeah, it's important, especially because there's, of course, and I think a healthy move by many people on the right to become less enthusiastic about foreign conflict,
00:02:30.320to become a little more isolationist, a little more interested in the well-being of the United States and a little less enthusiastic about empire maintenance.
00:02:40.180But at the same time, that can lead them to looking and projecting those understandings of our current situation back on figures who were tackling geopolitical issues that were very different,
00:02:52.560a world that was very different from the one that we're looking at today.
00:02:56.400And so I think it's important, like you said, to kind of contextualize that so people can better understand what these events mean.
00:03:03.720So we're going to dive into Henry Kissinger, kind of his legacy, the complicated history involved.
00:03:09.960But before we do that, guys, let's hear from today's sponsor.
00:03:13.100For years, Hollywood's been lacking when it comes to stories of redemption.
00:03:16.320Movies and TV shows have trended towards the antihero, a flawed person who makes no effort to change and just becomes worse and worse as the story goes on.
00:07:25.040And, you know, from 100 years since Muhammad's death until 732, you know, the century after he died,
00:07:30.700you know, they're sweeping hundreds of thousands have been killed.
00:07:33.300And the idea of a Muslim caliphate had spread as far north as the Pyrenees into northern Europe.
00:07:38.440So, I mean, for Kissinger, it's sort of fundamentally understanding,
00:07:42.860how do you maintain a balance of power that can effectively either, A, contain the opposing force,
00:07:50.660or, B, really understand and utilize that this, like, post-revolutionary force of communism has been defeated?
00:07:57.440And for Kissinger, that's really a big, you know, I guess maybe the modus operandi or reason to Tom for his work and what he had done there.
00:08:06.020And I know that there are a lot of people that will look at the situation in Vietnam or Salvador Allende and in Chile or, of course, the bombing of Cambodia and things like that.
00:08:16.500And I understand that there's this sort of knee-jerk reaction to take the moral position.
00:08:20.360Rightfully so, I think, in a lot of ways.
00:08:22.160We have a very strong distaste for war.
00:08:24.360But I also know that in the United States these days, there are three generations that have no memory of the Cold War
00:08:29.980and barely have a memory of the Global War on Terror, which are the Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha.
00:08:35.460And I think it's really important for us to understand our aversion for war,
00:08:39.500especially because we live in the aftermath of the Global War on Terror,
00:08:42.940and we spent 20 years in the Middle East wondering what did we really accomplish.
00:08:46.580But in the time where Henry Kissinger really rises to prominence,
00:08:50.220especially under Nixon, I think it's very crucial to understand that in the late 1960s, early 1970s,
00:08:58.340this is sort of a really large portion and where you see sort of this Maoist third world order system idea really come into play.
00:09:07.000You have the first and the second world, which, of course, we apply towards the West,
00:09:11.780the NATO-led powers of the United States versus sort of the Chinese and sort of the Soviet blocs.
00:09:17.280And then you have the third world, which are either the unaffiliated or what often gets labeled as the Global South.
00:09:22.600And I think that it's really important to contextualize when you hear people, say, complain about Catholicism in South America.
00:09:29.200You have this concept of liberation theology, where it's sort of this sort of sacralized or desacralized understanding of, say,
00:09:37.380Roman Catholicism through the precipice and hermeneutic lens of like, you know, revolutionary Marxist Leninism.
00:09:43.780And for America at this time, especially the 1960s and 70s, you kind of have questions wondering,
00:09:50.980well, how can we ensure that you don't have ideological successive takeovers in the world
00:09:57.360that could significantly threaten America's hegemony and legitimacy on the world stage?
00:10:03.700And it's important to conceptualize that the term legitimacy, as we know in international relations, is really coined by Kissinger.
00:10:10.960It's not really this concept of justice. It's not really a concept of, you know, oh, we're the righteous moral order in the world.
00:10:17.920But we're legitimacy in the stakes that, like, if we're to establish a rules-based system,
00:10:22.780we have the clout, capability, capital and military power to back it up.
00:10:26.380And you consider our position and the tenuous relationship with, say, the United States and Israel in the early formations, the 1960s.
00:10:34.800You see what had happened in Korea, the ongoing decades-long American presence in Vietnam.
00:10:41.640Like, people, you know, we think of, like, Nixon and we think of LBJ and we think of Kennedy as being the ones that really kick it off.
00:10:49.080America had been giving arms, supplies, aid and intelligence to the French and later other, you know, rebel forces inside Indochina or Vietnam, as we know it, since the Truman administration.
00:11:01.000Like, this has been a decades-long policy that I think we simply put in because more American boots got on the ground.
00:11:08.080Now, there's a lot there that Kissinger definitely can be rightfully blamed for, I think, especially once we get towards, like, you know, peace with honor and sort of the Vietnamization.
00:11:17.080And in part because he's limited by both what him and Nixon can do in relation to Congress.
00:11:22.040But the global picture for the United States at this time is where, you know, are we going to wage a nuclear war with the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union?
00:11:31.640And are we going to be geographically isolated as a country to where Mexico, South America, parts of East Asia, and, of course, the front on, you know, where the Fold of Gap is going to kick off, you know, the World War III festivities at the time.
00:11:45.420America was kind of going to be isolated, and that was a severe concern for Kissinger as well as for a lot of Cold Warriors at the time.
00:11:53.060And I guess I'll conclude this rant by saying, as we get into some of the rest of his life and his thinking and his work, that, you know, we have a strong distaste for our foreign policy officials today.
00:12:01.840Like, you have every reason to not like Antony Blinken.
00:12:04.400And you have every reason to not like John Kerry or Barack Obama or Madeleine Albright.
00:12:09.620But you have to understand that, you know, 50 years ago, people like James Baker, Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, and Robert Conquest were a totally different breed and caliber of men that were responding to what they saw as an ideological but also existential threat.
00:12:25.640Where, you know, if World War III were to break out, it's not like the horrors of Stalingrad or the Battle of the Bulge.
00:12:31.660We're talking about, like, millions dead in a matter of minutes, and you don't have a lot of time to answer for that.
00:12:36.080Whereas now we sort of appreciate this, quote unquote, unipolar moment, as Charles Krauthammer wrote about in 1990, that has fundamentally been taken advantage of by both hubris, but also just a complete hollowing out of America to a point where even Henry Kissinger himself in 2008 was like, globalization's not going away.
00:12:57.740But there are very serious debates about how far it's gone when it comes to maintaining national defense.
00:13:03.240And America doesn't have the capability to defend itself anymore, at least on an industrial capacity.
00:13:08.320And so nowadays, you see that with, like, President Biden, where they're like, well, we're going to reshore our businesses.
00:13:12.440We're going to make, you know, manufacturing and microchip plants here in America.
00:13:16.040And mainstream media will tell you, like, we don't have the brainpower, the capacity to do it very quickly.
00:13:22.060And that's a consequence of sort of this post-war, quote unquote, New World Order, as George H.W. Bush put it.
00:13:28.760But I think that that's sort of a very important preempt here.
00:13:33.260I mean, you can touch the guy, but I don't think he's the Darth Vader or the Dick Cheney whispering into people's ear that people want to make him out to be.
00:13:42.060Yeah, to be clear, like, we're not going to be saying this guy, you know, didn't make any mistakes or that this guy didn't commit war crimes.
00:13:49.240The point is that giving that context that you just gave is really important because it's easy today to look at the world around us and not understand a scenario in which there's a very real threat of nuclear annihilation.
00:14:06.500You know, today, it's just something that is it's a quaint thing that the warning videos from the 50s told kids to get under their desk about.
00:14:14.240Right. Like that. That's just it's such a it seems like such a threat that has passed us by.
00:14:20.260It can't possibly occur. It's not something to really worry about.
00:14:23.040It's not something it was just, you know, maybe used to gin up things or something.
00:14:27.580But no, this is this is a real struggle, an existential struggle, a scenario in which, like you said, the cost of conflict was just insane.
00:14:35.740And so people made very different calculations during that time.
00:14:40.640Now, some of them may be justified in retrospect, some may not.
00:14:44.280But it's it's really easy to look at, you know, different leaders in critical moments of history and project your knowledge of events backward onto them and then judge the way that they assess things in that moment.
00:14:56.520And so I think it is critical to kind of hold on to that frame because we have to understand that a false step by any of these actors really could end in a horrific slaughter many magnitudes above kind of what what people now attribute to their actions.
00:15:14.880And so that that has to weigh heavily on kind of any understanding of what decisions that they made.
00:15:19.500Now, you mentioned Metternich in there, and I think that, you know, again, I don't know Kissinger's writings or philosophy as well as you do.
00:15:27.580But from what I've gleaned, that's that's a really critical influence on him and the way that he saw kind of the post-World War to kind of arrangement of peace and Cold War, the way that that should be structured in order.
00:15:41.140So maybe you could take a moment. You said that these are reactions to great men were Metternich and then thereby Kissinger attempting to contain the actions of great men.
00:15:50.500Were they looking to recover from them, balance them, prevent the the arising of great men?
00:15:55.680Are they more interested in these supranational organizations that now rule many of our interactions?
00:16:02.640What does that look like from these men's viewpoint?
00:16:05.980Absolutely. And I think that's a good thing to point out.
00:16:08.100And I mean, for full disclosure, I mean, I am I'm definitely a Metternich fan.
00:16:11.700You can look at my profile picture. This is based off of a portrait of Metternich.
00:16:15.200I just put a frog on top of it. But for Metternich and also the influence that that has on Henry Kissinger, Metternich is, you know, a great Austrian count and diplomat that is playing a huge role in sort of maintaining his diplomacy during the Napoleonic era,
00:16:31.760but also sort of trying to establish what the European world is going to look like now that Napoleon is gone.
00:16:38.100And so, you know, I kind of consider Metternich this sort of like of his own time, like this sort of post-war reactionary wherein, you know, he would write, you know, quote,
00:16:49.340and I have my notes in front of me, so I apologize if it looks like I'm not paying attention to your audience.
00:16:52.900But states, just as human beings, often transgress laws. The only difference is the severity of their penalty.
00:16:58.800Society has its laws just as nature and man and is with old institutions, is with old men that can never be young again.
00:17:04.280This is the way of social order, and it cannot be different because of the law of nature.
00:17:07.760The moral world has its storms just like the material ones, and one can never cover the world with ruins without crushing men beneath them.
00:17:14.580And so these were ideas that Metternich had believed in, who I, you know, whose sole point of understanding sort of the world order that he was trying to help establish was is that freedom and liberty,
00:17:26.140even in sort of this like post-revolutionary sense in America, and more especially in France, that he would see, you know, ravage Europe again in his lifetime in 1848,
00:17:37.660And so for Kissinger, you know, this means having some really strict laws on like the freedom of the press and being more concerned about like political pamphlets.
00:17:45.980But also at the same time, you know, Metternich himself was, you know, kind of the guy that we see as the responsibility of sort of like the Congress of Vienna and the Concert of Europe,
00:17:56.220which lasts from about 1815 to 1913, although some scholars would argue it dies in 48.
00:18:04.360You know, during this time, he was looking towards sort of a way in which every coalition that was going to be brought up in treaties or pacts of defense could be countered by one another.
00:18:17.480And so you kind of see this happen, especially in Vienna, where Metternich is trying to more or less look at the crisis at 1812 with Napoleon and look at how everything is going.
00:18:28.520And for him, you know, we have to understand that sometimes there are men out there that can be real problems for your own state or for an order that you're trying to establish.
00:18:39.960And for Kissinger, you know, you can see this influence play out in some of his, you know, I suppose is more spicier quotes.
00:18:46.860You know, most famously in relation to, say, in 1973, you know, it's a shame that both sides can't lose.
00:18:54.220Or when it comes to dealing with the election in Chile, right, with, you know, Salvador Allende, you know, why don't you know, it's not the point of the voters to make bad decisions.
00:19:04.420And so when you're trying to balance power on a power politics scale, morality or the quote unquote, like American way in sort of the Mosca and Pareto sense are political formulas that you use to sort of justify your actions at home.
00:19:23.140And this is something that George Kennan talks about in American diplomacy, right, where America is really good at selling a warm fuzzy to itself.
00:19:29.760Like we can talk about and I mean, we still do this to this day, right, like Barack Obama famously, you know, moved the political narrative in Afghanistan and Iraq from the war on terrorism and getting a vengeance on Osama bin Laden in 9-11 to women's rights and education and eventually like LGBT plus stuff in Afghanistan.
00:19:50.280And this was used to sell sort of a progressive political formula to the United States to sort of justify our ongoing presence over there, which is a radical departure from why we got in there in the first place.
00:19:59.760Right. And as for Henry Kissinger, you know, you look at this sort of understanding of this concert system that he's not looking at it just as in the here and now about nuclear war or finding a way to contain the Soviet Union.
00:20:13.280But he's also looking at can we outlast the Soviet Union? And more importantly, can we create a world wherein the likelihood of a, you know, a bipolarity doesn't happen anymore?
00:20:25.600And if it does happen, can this be maintained? And this is sort of like these undercurrents of maintenance and balance of power, not only just find themselves in the 19th century, but he's trying to establish in his own right and to some degree with significant success,
00:20:41.640his own sort of his own sort of concert of the world for the 20th century, because if we look at sort of the Napoleonic or the post-French revolutionary ideas that would ravage Europe throughout the 19th century to a point where, you know, towards the end of the 19th century,
00:20:57.760you've got people like Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche all wondering if God is dead and what's the point of like living in an ordered society.
00:21:06.280Kissinger's looking at the 20th century on the lines of that. OK, we have this great.
00:21:11.640Overwhelming and all encompassing sort of ideology. And in his book, Diplomacy in 1994, you look at just how strong sort of Soviet policy was at this time.
00:21:22.740I mean, you have the Popular Front, you have an intensive intelligence network and a popular media consensus to where, you know, during the Cold War,
00:21:31.920the Soviets were giving millions of dollars to Hollywood to sort of promote, you know, revolutionary and communist causes that would be the equivalent of us funding a modern day
00:21:41.400congressional campaign in the 2020s. Like it's an insane amount of money that you're flinging to help win an ideological battle.
00:21:48.800And so for Kissinger, it's sort of this recognition and understanding that the world that we're in is an existential crisis.
00:21:56.260And how do we maintain the survivability of that? And I feel like this ties in very well when we talk about executive authority or when we see individuals like Thomas Massey in Congress or Rand Paul
00:22:07.260complain about executive powers in the war, where a lot of those are consequences of the Cold War era and sort of the understanding that there's not a lot of time to make decisions.
00:22:16.980So we, and the advent of nuclear weapons in the Cold War, like you can't go back to like Congress making former declarations of war
00:22:23.940because your decision response time is minutes. Congress isn't going to make a vote that quickly, never has.
00:22:30.040And so I think that it's very important for us to realize that for Kissinger, you know, Metternich is the biggest influence that he has.
00:22:36.980But alongside there, you understand that, you know, as he famously said, illegal is easy to do, unconstitutional might take some days.
00:22:45.540And he is responsible partially for things like the church committee in 1975 after Watergate and what the intelligence in community can and can't do.
00:22:53.880But that era of politics and that era of like great power statesmen, I don't think is really present with us anymore.
00:23:02.380Outside of the fact that we kind of just stand on the shoulders of giants, although Kissinger, physically speaking, was no giant, he's a very short man.
00:23:10.700But ideologically speaking, in the ability to wield power, he was certainly one of them.
00:23:15.760So when does Kissinger really formally enter the scene?
00:23:20.760Obviously, like I said, he's an academic, he's well respected and written some very important papers and whatnot on these issues.
00:23:31.460But when does he really start having a more direct influence when it comes to American foreign policy, American diplomacy?
00:23:39.340Sure. So I would argue that he probably really does start off during the Eisenhower administration shortly after he gets out of college.
00:23:48.380You know, he's he served and he remained on Harvard as like a Department of Government.
00:23:51.760He served as some educator and a faculty member.
00:23:56.360But in 1959, he joins the Operations Coordinating Board for the National Security Council.
00:24:01.920And he's there for a few years before going back into sort of the NGO private sector, because later he works for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
00:24:11.140But during that time, he he talked about nuclear weapons and foreign policy.
00:24:17.140He he was looking at a nuclear doctrine at the time.
00:24:20.200He's very critical of Eisenhower just being like, listen, we have, you know, tactical nuclear weapons.
00:24:26.700We still have more nuclear weapons than the Soviets can produce at this current time in the early 1950s.
00:24:30.920So why don't we just nuke as much as humanly possible?
00:24:33.980And I'm condensing sort of this policy for the sake of our time here.
00:24:37.320But, you know, he he was more or less just trying to say that that's not a likely way to win things, because, you know, you you basically throw out what's left of any political legitimacy from, you know, by using nuclear weapons all the time.
00:24:53.020Because, I mean, nuclear weapons that only increase their power and capacity.
00:24:56.500So I would start to argue in 1955, he enters the scene.
00:25:00.580He, of course, starts working even closer in the operations research office for the Center of International Affairs, which is something he co-founded with Robert Bowie.
00:25:10.440He works for, you know, the Department of State, the Rand Corporation, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
00:25:15.980But, you know, he first off really gets himself more involved in politics in the 1960s, primarily because he was working for the Rockefeller Republicans.
00:25:29.900Like he saw this as his gateway into further foreign policy, you know, lending the ear of potentially one of the most powerful politicians in the in the America at the time.
00:25:40.180Of course, Nelson Rockefeller never becomes president.
00:25:43.660And I would argue that that's probably a really good thing for the conservative movement in the United States, because if you if you thought you thought like the Goldwater conservative movement had failed, like Nelson Rockefeller is far more milquetoast and far more liberal than that.
00:25:58.160But he meets he meets Nixon during this time.
00:26:01.520And those two, you know, eventually get closer together, despite the fact that they never really had a like a like a really close friendship.
00:26:10.460They're not buddy buddy, like, say, you and I are.
00:26:13.320They're more like, you know, they're they're two men that click on a policy basis.
00:26:23.580However, you know, those two would end up working together.
00:26:26.640And after Nixon becomes president in January 1969, after he's sworn in, Kissinger's appointed to the national security advisor.
00:26:34.980And so you already have a man who has probably a great volume of work on nuclear weapons, international politics and theory.
00:26:42.540And now he's, you know, in the most one of the most powerful cabinet level positions in the Nixon White House, which is national security advisor.
00:26:50.600But, you know, everyone wants to say he comes on the scene with Nixon.
00:26:54.220But, I mean, this guy had been involved in academia in the 50s.
00:26:58.740I mean, he had written criticisms of Eisenhower.
00:27:01.480He was working for the Rand Corporation.
00:27:02.980He had worked for the Rockefeller Brothers.
00:27:04.580Like for we talk about managerialism a lot and career interests and strivers.
00:27:10.300And I mean, Kissinger was one of those men that just, you know, if he couldn't get a job, he would found something and write his papers there.
00:27:17.440And, you know, he's got a lengthy bibliography that I think is still well worth reading to this day.
00:27:24.180So, like you said, he he and Nixon, that's where a lot of people start the history.
00:27:28.980He's got he's got a lot of backstory before that.
00:27:32.300But I think that's where a lot of people are going to focus.
00:27:34.180So we could probably go ahead and pick up there.
00:27:37.000He and Nixon have a good working relationship.
00:27:39.380They're not they're not friends in the sense like you're talking about.
00:27:42.200But but they're people who who certainly work well together.
00:27:45.880Nixon has interestingly been rehabilitated in many ways, I think, by a lot of modern conservatives who now understand the ways in which he was kind of forced out by by elements of what today would be called kind of the deep state.
00:28:00.380And Kissinger seems to have a different feeling, I guess, you know, the way that that he is approached.
00:28:07.920So when we look at Kissinger's role, obviously, a lot of people are going to look at his role with Vietnam.
00:28:18.620You know, what parts of that are he is he directly involved in?
00:28:23.420How much is he conventionally involved in?
00:28:25.640And what does that say about his legacy there related direct?
00:28:28.800Because I think that's where most liberals hate him from is, of course, the Vietnam War.
00:28:33.200But but but what is his real role there?
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00:29:06.660Yeah, no, I think that's a really important thing to consider.
00:29:09.780As I had mentioned, like the Vietnam War has been this long going policy really since the Truman administration right out like during and after World War Two.
00:29:21.020And both, you know, from Truman all the way to, you know, Nixon and sort of the closing out of the final like leaving of troops from Saigon in 75, the last helicopter out as it's been famously photographed.
00:29:33.720Like we were there basically for almost 30 years.
00:29:36.640And it's a very important thing to consider how much of our aid is there.
00:29:40.540So Kissinger, of course, gets in, you know, he's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during this time.
00:29:47.840And he's he's been involved, obviously.
00:29:52.700I mean, he visited Vietnam in 65 and in 66.
00:29:56.940He was a consultant to the ambassador to Saigon by another sort of well-known, very older political dynasty from Henry Capitlodge Jr., who was the ambassador at the time.
00:30:09.360And he was sort of this intermediary to sort of negotiate things between the two.
00:30:14.560So but after coming into office with Nixon in 69, you know, the the strategy really does change to where, you know, maybe we can have a, you know, an opportunity to essentially pull out and get the, you know, get the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong to sort of just get their troops out of South Vietnam and to do this and have a coalition government.
00:30:38.000Which, of course, we've kind of seen this happen before in other places in American foreign policy.
00:30:42.820This doesn't really work because Nixon sort of disagrees with Kissinger over the concept that, listen, you know, if you have a coalition government with the North Vietnamese, you're essentially giving the Soviet Union an upper hand in Vietnam.
00:30:56.680And those political victories are very important for the left and progressivism in general, because as we've noticed in American leftism and progressivism really in Western countries,
00:31:07.360there's like a very thin degree of separation between just like unabashed, like Bolshevism and sort of the progressivism that we call it.
00:31:17.080Like there's a reason why a lot of people like to call, you know, the modern sort of day of like technocratic globalism is just like gay race communism.
00:31:24.320And they're like, they're not wrong for a variety of reasons.
00:31:27.160I would really recommend people read a book by a Polish man named Lizard Legutko called The Demon in Democracy.
00:31:37.740And he was basically arguing that he was asking the question, like, how come we didn't arrest or have any like Nuremberg trials for communists after the Cold War in like Eastern Europe?
00:31:47.420And Lizard Legutko basically makes the point that like, well, because a lot of communists make really good social Democrats and really good progressive liberals.
00:31:56.380And that's sort of the problem with our democratic system today.
00:32:00.100And that's something that's really important to consider here.
00:32:05.040You know, Kissinger initially didn't think South Vietnam was particularly important.
00:32:08.840But, you know, we have to support it because America is a global power and that, again, that legitimacy question has to be kept in mind.
00:32:15.280Like if America doesn't back its allies, what's the point?
00:32:18.100And this sort of becomes an expansion of two key issues.
00:32:21.980One, like the strategy of containment that is most famously authored by the late and great George Kennan,
00:32:28.020who also lived to be like 100 something years old and a great personal influence on me,
00:32:32.280alongside the Truman Doctrine that had really been in place about sort of just, you know, fighting communism wherever you see it.
00:32:41.520Now, of course, Operation Menu, you know, there are there's documented opposition to it.
00:32:48.940Ironically, Niall Ferguson or Neil Ferguson should probably clarify what that is.
00:32:53.220Yeah. Operation Menu is the the covert strategic air command bombing of Cambodia from like basically March of 1969 to May 1970.
00:33:04.020So it's like a year of just bombing, you know, the Cambodians.
00:33:08.380But also like we're mainly also where the Viet and the Kong are going through the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
00:33:13.900And of course, this is famously associated with the deaths of, you know, tens of thousands of civilians.
00:33:18.720This is where most famously you get the case against Henry Kissinger written by the late Christopher Hitchens that like these are war crimes.
00:33:26.680This was done covertly. This was not publicly known.
00:33:31.000And of course, you're also bombing the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia as well.
00:33:35.600And this is also in the backdrop that peace talks between the South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese is not going anywhere at all.
00:33:44.540You know, like, you know, Nguyen Phan Thieu, who is the South Vietnamese president at the time.
00:33:49.760He doesn't want like America to leave because he knows that he doesn't have the political capital or the military prowess to like fight this war against the North Vietnamese.
00:33:58.400And he's also incredibly concerned about what's going to happen in Cambodia after America goes, which, you know, also kind of echoes some of the things that we've seen in today's foreign policy from leaders.
00:34:08.680But these are, of course, very heavy things. Right. And we, you know, we do have to we want to leave.
00:34:18.520And of course, this is also in the midst of like the Pentagon papers.
00:34:24.400The this is where, of course, the information leaks that this is what America had been doing in Cambodia.
00:34:29.200This is where you get the famous free speech case about the freedom of the press and being able to publish these like, you know, very secret, classified, your eyes only documents.
00:34:39.240But, you know, Kissinger sort of recognizes that you kind of have to do it.
00:34:44.760And, you know, bombing Cambodia will disrupt raids from the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge from attacking South Vietnam.
00:34:53.240And if your policy is to, like, defend South Vietnam and to ensure that communism doesn't win here because you think that this means the Soviets will have greater access to, you know, the Asiatics, then you do what you have to do.
00:35:06.380I'm not defending it in the sense that, you know, this was the moral or right thing to do.
00:35:11.140But I think it's also important to consider that, like, if you find Henry Kissinger's position on Cambodia and the bombing of them, the civilians there to be bad.
00:35:19.960I really hope that you have the same opinion about the bombing of Dresden or any other like mass bombing event where civilian casualties were heavily incurred.
00:35:29.080But I mean, like Vietnam, of course, is part of where Kissinger is, you know, is famously derided for alongside this.
00:35:36.360Of course, you try to see Vietnamization happen.
00:35:40.080And I do think that it's sort of important to see that, like, you know, Vietnamization and having, you know, peace talks might be able to happen with, you know, those that are there.
00:35:52.840You know, R.H. Hattleman and John Ilrichman, other, you know, close Nixon aides that are, you know, you'll hear their voices in the Kissinger tapes.
00:36:00.760That, you know, we have a lot of issues about achieving peace in South Vietnam and how to pull out.
00:36:06.840And of course, this is where you get Kissinger's more spicy comments on the world as he sees it, you know, that these guys are just a bunch of little, you know, turds for lack of a for lack of, you know, making things clean on the air.
00:36:18.700But it's a really important thing to consider that, you know, despite all of our presence there, even after Nixon's gone, Kissinger is still, you know, trying to maintain some level of peace and to keep things going.
00:36:33.180Nevertheless, like, even though you get the Paris Peace Accords in in the 1970s, like 73, it doesn't mean much in relation to the fact that, like, eventually South Vietnam, as we know, it falls.
00:36:45.940And, you know, whether or not we should have been there from the beginning raises the question of, like, well, what is America's position on, like, colonial claims after World War II?
00:36:54.960And we were sort of, you know, initially wanting the French to fight this battle.
00:36:59.860And even, you know, Kissinger was kind of, like, ambivalent about further American presence at first.
00:37:04.640But once we were committed, the realpolitik takes over.
00:37:08.460And again, like, to go into, like, Kissinger and Nixon into Vietnam would deserve, like, far more time than I'm giving it here.
00:37:18.000And I'm skipping over a lot of details.
00:37:19.520But I think it's important to know that most people are critical of Kissinger primarily for his position in the bombing of Cambodia during the late 60s or at least in the 1970s, on top of, you know, the positions of Salvador Allende and the utilization of the CIA and assassinating targets.
00:37:37.800And this is where you get sort of this, like, progressive mythology that the United States is, like, intelligence apparatus has always been about supporting, quote, unquote, right-wing governments across the world.
00:37:48.460But, I mean, if you look at, like, sub-Saharan Africa or America's position during the Suez crisis, you'll notice that America is oddly on the same camp quite a few times as the Soviet Union when it comes to, like, decolonialization.
00:38:01.640You know, there's a lot of efforts in South Africa and Central America and mainly Northern Africa where we're kind of, you know, pro these revolutionary movements to either divorce them from Europe but also trying to divorce them from the Soviet Union.
00:38:16.600And so, like, this is where you get a lot of progressive and mainstream mythology behind Kissinger there.
00:38:22.260And there are some very, like, I would argue in myself that, you know, it probably would have been better for those territories to be held on by colonial powers.
00:38:31.200And I live in 2023 where Kissinger's died and we can look at his record.
00:38:35.620But it's important to recognize that, like, these are the things that people really have a strong burning moral hatred for.
00:38:42.980But at the same time, like, you can hate the, you know, what he'd done to the Cambodians, to the Vietnamese.
00:38:48.320But, again, I would hope that you have the same opinion about the hundreds of thousands of more people that would die under the Khmer Rouge.
00:38:54.520Because if not, we're being very selective with our moral outrage.
00:38:58.260And you can hate Henry Kissinger, but I hate communists more.
00:39:04.280So I'm going to ask you a sprawling question here.
00:39:07.020And feel free to answer in whatever direction you prefer.
00:39:10.500But as you were talking about that, I'm thinking to myself, so in this scenario, is it a situation in which we have multiple post-World War II, post-colonial empires
00:39:29.560looking to de-ravel the logic that held up those previous world-spanning kind of empires?
00:39:43.420Is it a lack of willingness of many of these, of America specifically, to understand perhaps the cost of being fully involved in a global order?
00:39:57.400Or is it simply two powers that are kind of doing the powers in arms race, and there's simply no other option but expand in this way?
00:40:12.380And you're simply going to look for the explanation that allows you to do so, but you can't let the other guy do it.
00:40:18.100So maybe you have one explanation and he has the other.
00:40:21.160You have one political form, he has the other.
00:40:22.420But the goal has to be the same because when one guy builds tanks, you've got to build tanks.
00:40:27.180And when one guy builds nukes, you've got to build nukes.
00:40:28.780And this is just the way that World Orders are the only option.
00:40:32.880What is driving, I guess, at the end of the day, the way that they are approaching control and intervention in these areas?
00:40:44.260Like you said, Kissinger, in many ways, is like, well, you just have to do this.
00:40:48.300There's there's no other option. And is that a consequence of of kind of the storyline of the way that these powers are are looking to justify their geopolitical positions?
00:40:59.060Is that a reality? Is that simply a mechanical reality is inescapable and can't be morally judged?
00:41:05.940Sure. And I mean, like, that's been the ultimate debate between, say, more Wilsonian idealists, which you could argue Kissinger definitely was towards sort of the end of his more public facing career, which I really you could say at the end of his life.
00:41:21.980But I mean, from the 1990s onward, you could argue and Kissinger would argue the sort of Wilsonian idealism wins.
00:41:28.120But Wilsonian idealism doesn't win without a lot of like shady men in the dark willing to do evil on your behalf to sort of crip from that famous George Orwell quote that, you know, we sleep soundly at night because there are men willing to do harm on our behalf.
00:41:41.440But I mean, this has been the debate over how, you know, the world order or international relations is structured for America, more specifically, you'll get individuals like William William Appelman Williams, who I wish more people were politically aware of.
00:41:57.320I mean, he was a great people kind of call him a leftist, but I would argue that he's maybe what you would call like a 19th century progressive where he's kind of like understanding, like our way of expansion of empire is maybe not a good thing.
00:42:10.360But he's got a great book called Empire's a Way of Life and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy are these two books of his.
00:42:15.860And he would argue that like America has had this sort of imperialist ambition from the beginning, both with the American continent, but also like the surrounding area.
00:42:24.680And after the conquest of the frontier, sort of Frederick Jackson, Turner's thesis, well, the only way that you can expand the frontier is by looking abroad.
00:42:32.780And so in doing so, you get this sort of like great American conquest of like Central and South America, these filibusters.
00:42:38.080People don't know this, but like the earliest debate over the use of the Monroe Doctrine isn't about, you know, foreign policy encouragements from like the French or others into like Central and South America from European powers.
00:42:52.060It's that, you know, Congress, like President James K. Polk wanted to use the Monroe Doctrine to save like white filibustering, you know, settlers on the Yucatan Peninsula from being like ethnically exterminated from the natives and the population there.
00:43:08.820And that's, you know, unfortunately, James Madison dies in Congress before you like you get an answer as to like the author's original intent of that policy.
00:43:17.300But I mean, with respects to say Kissinger, like the 20th century writ large, there is the question of like, well, where's peace achieved?
00:43:25.780And so I think Kissinger would probably fall in the same camp as, say, someone like the late international relations scholar Kenneth Waltz, where he would argue that, you know, bipolarity did increase the peace and that our technological innovations that come from, say, like this Cold War, wartime, you know, policy greatly expands the, you know, economic and political prosperity of the respective country.
00:43:51.940Like, you know, everything from GPS to the internet emerges as sort of these Cold War, how do we maintain command and control of the United States after nuclear strike happens?
00:44:01.800You know, like this is what ARPANET originally is meant to be is like, how can we talk to, you know, computers and other parts of the world after a nuclear strike?
00:44:10.380But like, I think with respects to the 20th century and the Cold War writ large, you have a system that is sort of this post-1945 liberal order, which often, as the historian John G. Eikenberry would call liberal hegemony, which is a term you'll hear used by people like Dr. Barry Posen or Dr. John G. Meersheimer.
00:44:32.520Like, that is sort of your opposition to this sort of all-encompassing, destructive system of, you know, communism that, as we witnessed during this Bolshevik revolution, the interwar years and in the 1940s and World War II and afterwards, was just meant hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people would die.
00:44:54.060Not just because of how poorly managed communism is, but because communism was this sort of all-encompassing idea of, like, world revolution.
00:45:03.720And again, this is why Sean McMeegan's 2021 book, Stalin's War, is so important that I'm going through on my channel.
00:45:09.660But as for Kissinger, and to get back maybe to his legacy and to his view on the world, you know, this sort of world order has to encompass, you know, where can you project power and how can you use that as leverage against your opposition?
00:45:22.740And so, you know, for Kissinger and also to a lesser, well, I would argue to a greater extent, Charles de Gaulle, you know, the Soviet Union and China are very different in their, you know, presentation or their utilization and implementation of communism.
00:45:41.960So, you know, like Maoism or Marxist-Maoism versus, say, Marxist-Leninism of the Soviet Union, this is where you get the ideological Sino-Soviet split.
00:45:51.940The Chinese are beginning to criticize the Soviets for having a, quote-unquote, Soviet empire.
00:45:57.140Imperialism is antithetical to communism, so what do we do?
00:45:59.820And even before Nixon was president, the late and arguably great Charles de Gaulle, you know, had famously wrote to Nixon multiple times saying that you should consider, the United States should consider a policy avenue towards normalizing relations with China.
00:46:14.320They're not like the Soviet Union and that, you know, if you can decouple Peking or Beijing as we know it today from the Soviets, like you've essentially, you know, brought the two largest populations and modernizing countries away from one another.
00:46:31.240And so Henry Kissinger, of course, is very famous for opening China to the United States, but it also has the same problem that we would later see in the 80s and 90s, sort of after Kissinger's out of any effective policy-making position in an executive branch, where the question of opening China, is that good or bad?
00:46:50.800I mean, it's a big reason why Ross Perot ran for president, and that with respects to opening up China, you know, a lot of American dollars helped make, you know, Deng Xiaoping's, like, quote-unquote, reforms work in the same way that the reason why the Soviet Union industrializes so rapidly isn't because of Stalin's leadership, it's because a lot of American capitalists and a lot of American, like, technical expertise went over to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 40s.
00:47:17.400And it's really important to consider that, that on the strategic chessboard of, like, global politics, yeah, it's a really good idea to separate China from the Soviet Union, whereas nowadays, we sort of look at that first nation status, or first preferred nation status that we have at the World Trade Organization, it's a disaster.
00:47:37.860And one can look from, like, 1984 to, like, today, where the number of nations who have China as their first trading partner went from the United States to China, you know, in a matter of, like, 40 years.
00:47:50.360And that's, that's the disaster. And again, this goes back to even Kissinger's, like, later writings in the early 90s, and even in the early 2000s, where it's just, we need a foreign policy, what we are doing is incoherent, and we are sort of squabbling and ruining sort of this post-Cold War order.
00:48:08.020And we're not effectively pointing out a plan to execute and accomplish anything. I mean, like, you could argue that, like, our intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan has been an unmitigated disaster, and I would argue that it is.
00:48:19.860But, you know, when people were talking about it, you had people like the late neoconservative writer Charles Krauthammer being, like, these are the crown jewels of the Middle East, like, we could take them over, and we could have, like, unilateral power in the Middle East in a way that, like, Russia and China could only dream of.
00:48:37.380We never did those things. And if people want to read more about that, I would recommend people read an article in the American Affairs Journal called Data-Driven Defeat, where basically it was just, we have all these charts.
00:48:49.860And rules of engagement limitations on what we can do in there, and we have no endgame. And that's the big problem, I think, with where we are now, is that you look at Ukraine or the war in Israel or our ongoing fear of war with China over Taiwan, the question that no one seems to be asking is, what's the endgame?
00:49:10.060And for all the things that you can blame Henry Kissinger on, and there are a lot of things that are definitely worth criticizing, the one thing that at least Henry Kissinger, at least ideologically, had in mind was, well, how do we govern or order the world as we know it after the Soviet Union's gone?
00:49:25.780Whereas nowadays, you know, you have some people are raising questions like, well, what do we do when China reaches power parity? Or what do we do when America can no longer function as, like, a livable democracy, because we've, like, imported so many people that we can't have a functioning, like, you know, civil society, which I would argue we're already there.
00:49:46.760Yeah, so now, right? But, and that raises the question, like, well, what's your foreign policy going to be? And how do you govern on the world order? To a point where even, like, Joe Biden, as senile as he is, he's got people whispering in his ear saying that, like, the world needs to recognize that, like, America's not going to be here forever, or at least is, like, the great power that it is, and you need to learn to get along with other people.
00:50:06.140And, again, like, that's really poor planning, because if you are still a quote-unquote great power, you don't tell people to get along without us while we're gone. Like, that's just something you don't do. You know, no empire lasts forever, but you always have a plan in place to make it sound like you will be.
00:50:24.580And, unfortunately, this class of foreign policy officials, foreign service officers, they're not Henry Kissinger, they're not George Kennan, they're not James Baker, they're not Robert Conquest, they're not Haldeman.
00:50:36.380And, like, that's a really important thing to consider, because we don't have a living memory of living under the Cold War. You and I don't, Oren, but I think it's important that when we look at his record, or we look at what he's written and done,
00:50:49.440that we can't divorce, like, the geopolitical, or even just the regular political realities of the United States in the midst of that time period.
00:50:58.080Whereas today, you know, we can look at the anti-war sentiments of the war on terror, or Israel, or Ukraine, and so on, and we can definitely judge it with a more fresh pair of eyes.
00:51:09.980But to sort of conclude this little rambling bit here, is that, you know, every generation has a war that they don't want to compare themselves to.
00:51:20.040Famously, George W. Bush and John Kerry did not want Iraq and Afghanistan to be like Vietnam. They both vividly remembered that.
00:51:28.060And to some extent, it didn't end up like Vietnam at all. We made it more automated and less impersonal.
00:51:33.840But nowadays, wars are compared on the basis of those conflicts to today. We don't want Ukraine to be another Syria.
00:51:39.220We don't want Ukraine to be another, like, way where we get involved, or we realize our worst World War III fears between Russia and NATO or whatever.
00:51:46.400But at this time, you were looking at something new and something different, wherein after World War II, you know, for better or for worse, America is the only power that really was, like, you know, not destroyed.
00:52:01.500It still had its industrial capacity. It still had a population that had been ethnically cleansed or depleted.
00:52:06.980So it's the world power. And now you have to deal with a really a savage horde of communists that are ready to take over Eastern Europe,
00:52:13.460and by a larger extent, the rest of sort of like the third non-Western, non-white world.
00:52:18.300And that was sort of the battle that was being played there. But again, I think the real issue out of that real tragedy of power politics is that Wilsonian idealism and progressive liberalism in America is very similar to Bolshevism and very similar to communism.
00:52:34.000And so to sort of crip from a great tweet by Koveyfe and on, you know, Bolshevism kind of is the winner out of the 20th century, unfortunately, and the world order we have tried its best to contain it.
00:52:47.500But, you know, now we live in the consequences of that post-Cold War order, and we're kind of watching the quote-unquote unipolar moment get squandered as we witness the linkage between China, Russia, Iran, and to some lesser extent, India,
00:53:05.720because we've kind of squandered our relationship with India over the war in Ukraine, because we were already irked by the Indians by buying weapons from Russia.
00:53:13.280But, you know, now they're buying cheap oil from Russia, and we need them in our own quote-unquote quad alliance against China. What are we doing?
00:53:19.640And so the lack of strategic planning and a lack of, I would argue, very competent foreign service officers is the great tragedy of Henry Kissinger's career that there are no Kissinger equivalents today.
00:53:31.340So, for people who would say, just to wrap this up real quick, I know you've touched on most of this, but just to put a bow on it, for people who would say,
00:53:42.020Henry Kissinger is the architect of the global American empire. He's what brought us this neocon moment. He's the reason we're here, or he's one of the authors, architects of this. How would you respond to that?
00:53:53.540I would argue, what's your definition of neoconservatism? I mean, neoconservatism was sort of posited by a question by Max Boot in 2003,
00:54:04.100in an article in the Wall Street Journal asking, what is neoconservatism? And Max Boot pretty much argued that, you know,
00:54:11.940it's primarily a foreign policy that is sort of oriented towards fighting against, you know, Islamic,
00:54:19.240but also primarily in supporting of the state of Israel. And if you look at any comment by Henry
00:54:25.300Kissinger towards Israel, you'll kind of realize that he was not, he was not loved by the Israelis at all,
00:54:31.320and still isn't now that he's dead. And that's something important to consider here. Henry Kissinger,
00:54:36.860at the very least, was more realistic in his political appraisals of the international system,
00:54:41.620and how much power you can put leverage. Whereas nowadays, we do this in the quote unquote,
00:54:46.300name of democracy or the name of this, but we don't have a plan outwards there. I mean,
00:54:51.040when Henry Kissinger was still, National Security Advisory famously told, you know, Nixon that like,
00:54:58.560the immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel is not America's like foreign policy interest,
00:55:03.540and we shouldn't be concerned about the humanitarian obligations that we might have to them.
00:55:08.200And this is, of course, was during a fear that the Soviets were going to pogrom what was left of
00:55:12.180Slavic and Eastern European Jews in the Soviet Union. But to say that he's like the chief
00:55:17.000architect of neoconservatism, I would argue that that's probably not the case, because
00:55:21.140neoconservatism as we know it really emerges after a bunch of disaffected Trotskyists who were
00:55:28.420primarily, you know, who were leftists originally got really disaffected by the state of affairs in
00:55:33.940America. I mean, one of the most famous like neoconservatives, Norman Potterets and his son,
00:55:38.780John, I mean, Norman Potterets really starts turning neoconservative after he, he sort of
00:55:44.700looks at how the social situation gets in America. This is where you get the famous 1963 essay, you
00:55:51.980know, you know, my Negro problem and ours. And later on, he becomes like a very chief principled,
00:55:58.600like, you know, conservative Judeo-Christian values type guy, we have to support Israel,
00:56:02.140we have to support American values abroad, for little more than ideological and some extent,
00:56:07.560like ethno-narcissistic reasons. But to say Henry Kissinger was like the chief architect of what
00:56:13.040that would become, I would really suggest that just people look at Kissinger's record compared to say,
00:56:19.060you know, David Frum or any sort of like David French neoconservatism today, like he, you know,
00:56:25.260there's not a, you could argue there's a link between Douglas Murray and Henry Kissinger, but there's
00:56:29.280not, that link is not as strong as you want it to be.
00:56:32.020Hmm. All right, well, we're going to go ahead and pivot to the questions of the people. We got a few
00:56:37.740over here. But before we do, sir, where should people check out your excellent work?
00:56:42.400People can find me over on YouTube, Odyssey, Telegram, all podcast platforms, Libsyn and such
00:56:48.300at findmyfriends.net slash the Prudentialist. Right now I'm going through the entirety of Sean McMeekin's
00:56:54.8002021 book, Stalin's War, New History of World War II. I've got some great guests that have joined me as we
00:57:00.440read through and discuss the history of this conflict with a fresh pair of eyes and understanding
00:57:04.940the Soviet Union. Outside of that, I cover digital ecology, international relations, and the ongoing
00:57:11.400culture war as we know it. And as always, Warren, thank you so much for having me.
00:57:14.800Absolutely, man. No, I learned a lot. This is something that, of course, I knew the outline of,
00:57:18.660I knew the basics of, but I wanted to go into a deeper dive, you know, like I said, just that context so
00:57:24.160that we're not just looking at the McNuggets, the things that get filtered through the internet or through,
00:57:28.500you know, different slogans. And so I'm glad that you took us on a tour so we'd have
00:57:32.740a better grasp of what Kissinger was about and what his legacy is. All right, guys, let's look at
00:57:39.020your questions here. We've got a Tismo Prime for $1.99. Thank you very much, sir. Y'all the homies
00:57:46.280for real, for real. Well, despite your Zoomer appellation, I appreciate your chat. Thank you very
00:57:52.360much. And Cooper Weirdo here for $2. Thanks, guys. Very cool. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Yeah,
00:57:58.040I had a good time. Appreciate, uh, Prude coming on and glad that you guys enjoyed it. All right.
00:58:04.500Well, we're going to go ahead and get out of here, guys. But before we do, of course, if this is your
00:58:08.420first time on this channel, please make sure that you go ahead and subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show
00:58:13.020on your favorite podcast platforms and make sure that you go ahead and like and subscribe to this
00:58:19.480channel if it's your first time coming by here. Uh, I think I have a new article coming up on the
00:58:25.000Blizz right now. So if you'd like to go read that, you can go check that out. Thank you for coming by,
00:58:29.680guys. Thanks to Prude once again for coming on. And as always, I will talk to you next time.