The Auron MacIntyre Show - The Complicated Legacy of Henry Kissinger ｜ Guest： The Prudentialist ｜ 12⧸6⧸23

00:00:00.000 We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.

00:00:02.320 Rocky's Vacation, here we come.

00:00:05.060 Whoa, is this economy?

00:00:07.180 Free beer, wine, and snacks.

00:00:09.620 Sweet! 0.95

00:00:10.720 Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.

00:00:14.760 And with live TV, I'm not missing the game.

00:00:17.800 It's kind of like, I'm already on vacation.

00:00:20.980 Nice! 0.94

00:00:22.240 On behalf of Air Canada, nice travels.

00:00:25.260 Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.

00:00:27.200 Sponsored by Bell. Conditions apply.

00:00:28.720 CRCanada.com.

00:00:30.540 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:32.140 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.660 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:38.220 So, Henry Kissinger died last week.

00:00:41.760 And now nobody can, you know, post the fun meme of death at the claw machine.

00:00:48.660 Is Henry Kissinger even in there as the next person dies?

00:00:52.040 You know, there's always the funny one going on.

00:00:54.220 But a lot of people, of course, look at Henry Kissinger and they say,

00:00:57.640 Okay, this guy's like Darth Vader, basically.

00:01:00.220 He's pure evil.

00:01:01.240 He's hated by a lot of people on the left and the right.

00:01:04.740 And I think it was important to take a look at who Henry Kissinger is and a little bit of his history.

00:01:10.060 Because I do think there's a lot of controversy.

00:01:11.800 I do think there's a lot to dislike there.

00:01:13.800 But 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.

00:01:23.500 And 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.

00:01:33.600 Luckily, one of your favorite co-hosts is a foreign policy wonk and he's a devotee of Kissinger's writings.

00:01:41.880 And so today I will be joined, of course, by the Prudentialists.

00:01:45.380 Thanks for coming on, man.

00:01:46.580 Yeah, thanks for having me on, Oren.

00:01:47.880 I 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.

00:01:58.800 And yeah, no, I think it's important that we discuss him.

00:02:01.920 For 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,

00:02:15.400 but as a man contextualized in history and time.

00:02:19.220 Yeah, 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,

00:02:30.320 to 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.

00:02:40.180 But 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,

00:02:52.560 a world that was very different from the one that we're looking at today.

00:02:56.400 And so I think it's important, like you said, to kind of contextualize that so people can better understand what these events mean.

00:03:03.720 So we're going to dive into Henry Kissinger, kind of his legacy, the complicated history involved.

00:03:09.960 But before we do that, guys, let's hear from today's sponsor.

00:03:13.100 For years, Hollywood's been lacking when it comes to stories of redemption.

00:03:16.320 Movies 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.

00:03:23.340 Well, here's some great news.

00:03:24.740 The Blind, the True Story of the Robertson Family is now available for purchase on Blaze TV.

00:03:29.340 Maybe you've made a mess of your life.

00:03:30.840 Maybe someone you love is in a dark place.

00:03:32.780 Maybe all of the above.

00:03:34.180 If you or someone you know feels beyond redemption, you need to watch this movie.

00:03:38.180 And you'll see there's always hope.

00:03:39.860 The Blind takes you on an incredible journey through the life of Phil Robertson,

00:03:43.080 giving you an intimate look into the man behind the legend and the trials, triumphs, and values that shaped him through the years.

00:03:49.640 While The Blind wasn't a Blaze Media production, since Phil is such a big part of our Blaze TV family,

00:03:54.520 we wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to stream it here.

00:03:57.400 Because it isn't ours, we can't include it as part of the subscription.

00:04:00.300 But if you'd rather purchase it and stream it here rather than Apple or Amazon,

00:04:04.620 we wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to do that.

00:04:07.140 Make sure to act now.

00:04:08.160 Don't miss this opportunity to own The Blind, a Phil Robertson story on Blaze TV.

00:04:12.600 You can buy it today at blazetv.com, The Blind, for $19.99.

00:04:17.460 That's blazetv.com slash The Blind.

00:04:20.440 All right, so, Prudentialist, when we dive into this, I guess there's a bunch of different places we could begin.

00:04:29.480 But maybe let's just get a brief background on Kissinger first.

00:04:33.560 As I understand, he was a German Jew who immigrated into the United States.

00:04:39.760 Kind of a common theme of trying to get out during the late 1930s.

00:04:45.620 Ended up fighting in World War II and then entered into academia.

00:04:50.360 And he's one of those guys that quickly ended up becoming someone who was asked about all,

00:04:57.880 referenced by all kinds of different think tanks, different organizations,

00:05:00.760 because he started building a reputation for understanding foreign policy and warfare and diplomacy

00:05:08.340 in a way that a lot of people didn't at that time.

00:05:12.160 Yeah, so as we can tell from the length of his life, he was born in 1923.

00:05:17.060 He would later, of course, leave with his family, immigrating from Germany in the 1930s in the midst of that regime,

00:05:22.780 putting on its persecution and its political attitudes towards individuals of a Jewish background.

00:05:27.840 And, of course, he would later serve in the United States Armed Forces.

00:05:31.560 He was present and served the rank as a sergeant.

00:05:34.160 Later, he would go on and find himself in the Ivy Leagues.

00:05:37.820 His bachelor's thesis is actually the reason why there's a lengthy limit for why,

00:05:44.340 how much you can submit for your undergraduate degree.

00:05:47.140 He wrote about Spangler, Toynbee, and Kant and sort of reflections on history,

00:05:51.560 which is actually really well worth your time.

00:05:53.100 It's like 400 pages long.

00:05:54.660 I found that very interesting.

00:05:55.780 Yeah, those would be his references for that record-breaking thesis.

00:06:00.720 But sorry.

00:06:00.940 Well, I mean, you can't talk about those people without going into length.

00:06:04.040 And I mean, it doesn't it shouldn't surprise anyone that what will serving with President Nixon,

00:06:08.320 he would give the president an abridged sort of one volume copy of The Decline of the West by Spangler.

00:06:14.060 But, you know, later on, get his master's degree, I believe, at Harvard University before getting his Ph.D.,

00:06:18.780 which has been since, you know, his Ph.D. thesis was republished in 1957.

00:06:23.740 And it's about, you know, Metternet Kasselra and the Concert of Peace,

00:06:28.080 sort of about the understanding of the post-Nepoleonic era and the Concert of Europe as we know it.

00:06:33.000 And that thesis alone, alongside his sort of monumental work in 1994, Diplomacy,

00:06:39.960 is really the key way of understanding Henry Kissinger's worldview, just sort of in general,

00:06:46.880 that he views the ongoing conflict of the Cold War, and especially the end of it,

00:06:51.720 as this sort of post-Napoleonic era in which we have to restructure the balance of power and as we see it.

00:06:58.480 Because, you know, Metternich, looking at Napoleon, and sort of in like a Thomas Carlyle sense,

00:07:03.800 like, you have these great men of history that sort of sweep around and fundamentally change the world as we know it.

00:07:09.720 And whoever's there to pick up the pieces has to fundamentally ensure that

00:07:13.640 any time a great man comes along, usually millions of people die.

00:07:17.540 I mean, like, this is something that, you know, Carlyle points out about, like, about Muhammad.

00:07:21.800 You know, well, I don't view him as a prophet, right?

00:07:23.740 There's a billion people do.

00:07:25.040 And, you know, from 100 years since Muhammad's death until 732, you know, the century after he died,

00:07:30.700 you know, they're sweeping hundreds of thousands have been killed.

00:07:33.300 And the idea of a Muslim caliphate had spread as far north as the Pyrenees into northern Europe.

00:07:38.440 So, I mean, for Kissinger, it's sort of fundamentally understanding,

00:07:42.860 how do you maintain a balance of power that can effectively either, A, contain the opposing force,

00:07:50.660 or, B, really understand and utilize that this, like, post-revolutionary force of communism has been defeated?

00:07:57.440 And 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.

00:08:06.020 And 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.

00:08:16.500 And I understand that there's this sort of knee-jerk reaction to take the moral position.

00:08:20.360 Rightfully so, I think, in a lot of ways.

00:08:22.160 We have a very strong distaste for war.

00:08:24.360 But I also know that in the United States these days, there are three generations that have no memory of the Cold War

00:08:29.980 and barely have a memory of the Global War on Terror, which are the Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha.

00:08:35.460 And I think it's really important for us to understand our aversion for war,

00:08:39.500 especially because we live in the aftermath of the Global War on Terror,

00:08:42.940 and we spent 20 years in the Middle East wondering what did we really accomplish.

00:08:46.580 But in the time where Henry Kissinger really rises to prominence,

00:08:50.220 especially under Nixon, I think it's very crucial to understand that in the late 1960s, early 1970s,

00:08:58.340 this is sort of a really large portion and where you see sort of this Maoist third world order system idea really come into play.

00:09:07.000 You have the first and the second world, which, of course, we apply towards the West, 0.99

00:09:11.780 the NATO-led powers of the United States versus sort of the Chinese and sort of the Soviet blocs.

00:09:17.280 And then you have the third world, which are either the unaffiliated or what often gets labeled as the Global South. 0.57

00:09:22.600 And I think that it's really important to contextualize when you hear people, say, complain about Catholicism in South America.

00:09:29.200 You have this concept of liberation theology, where it's sort of this sort of sacralized or desacralized understanding of, say,

00:09:37.380 Roman Catholicism through the precipice and hermeneutic lens of like, you know, revolutionary Marxist Leninism. 0.66

00:09:43.780 And for America at this time, especially the 1960s and 70s, you kind of have questions wondering,

00:09:50.980 well, how can we ensure that you don't have ideological successive takeovers in the world

00:09:57.360 that could significantly threaten America's hegemony and legitimacy on the world stage?

00:10:03.700 And it's important to conceptualize that the term legitimacy, as we know in international relations, is really coined by Kissinger.

00:10:10.960 It'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.

00:10:17.920 But we're legitimacy in the stakes that, like, if we're to establish a rules-based system,

00:10:22.780 we have the clout, capability, capital and military power to back it up.

00:10:26.380 And you consider our position and the tenuous relationship with, say, the United States and Israel in the early formations, the 1960s.

00:10:34.800 You see what had happened in Korea, the ongoing decades-long American presence in Vietnam.

00:10:41.640 Like, 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.

00:10:49.080 America 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.

00:11:01.000 Like, this has been a decades-long policy that I think we simply put in because more American boots got on the ground.

00:11:08.080 Now, 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.

00:11:17.080 And in part because he's limited by both what him and Nixon can do in relation to Congress.

00:11:22.040 But 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?

00:11:31.640 And 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.

00:11:45.420 America 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.

00:11:53.060 And 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.

00:12:01.840 Like, you have every reason to not like Antony Blinken.

00:12:04.400 And you have every reason to not like John Kerry or Barack Obama or Madeleine Albright.

00:12:09.620 But 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.

00:12:25.640 Where, you know, if World War III were to break out, it's not like the horrors of Stalingrad or the Battle of the Bulge.

00:12:31.660 We're talking about, like, millions dead in a matter of minutes, and you don't have a lot of time to answer for that.

00:12:36.080 Whereas 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.

00:12:57.740 But there are very serious debates about how far it's gone when it comes to maintaining national defense.

00:13:03.240 And America doesn't have the capability to defend itself anymore, at least on an industrial capacity.

00:13:08.320 And so nowadays, you see that with, like, President Biden, where they're like, well, we're going to reshore our businesses.

00:13:12.440 We're going to make, you know, manufacturing and microchip plants here in America.

00:13:16.040 And mainstream media will tell you, like, we don't have the brainpower, the capacity to do it very quickly.

00:13:21.180 It'll take decades.

00:13:22.060 And that's a consequence of sort of this post-war, quote unquote, New World Order, as George H.W. Bush put it.

00:13:28.760 But I think that that's sort of a very important preempt here.

00:13:33.260 I 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.

00:13:42.060 Yeah, 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.

00:13:49.240 The 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.

00:14:06.500 You 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.

00:14:14.240 Right. Like that. That's just it's such a it seems like such a threat that has passed us by.

00:14:20.260 It can't possibly occur. It's not something to really worry about.

00:14:23.040 It's not something it was just, you know, maybe used to gin up things or something.

00:14:27.580 But 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.

00:14:35.740 And so people made very different calculations during that time.

00:14:40.640 Now, some of them may be justified in retrospect, some may not.

00:14:44.280 But 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.

00:14:56.520 And 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.

00:15:14.880 And so that that has to weigh heavily on kind of any understanding of what decisions that they made.

00:15:19.500 Now, 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.

00:15:27.580 But 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.

00:15:41.140 So 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.

00:15:50.500 Were they looking to recover from them, balance them, prevent the the arising of great men?

00:15:55.680 Are they more interested in these supranational organizations that now rule many of our interactions?

00:16:02.640 What does that look like from these men's viewpoint?

00:16:05.980 Absolutely. And I think that's a good thing to point out.

00:16:08.100 And I mean, for full disclosure, I mean, I am I'm definitely a Metternich fan.

00:16:11.700 You can look at my profile picture. This is based off of a portrait of Metternich.

00:16:15.200 I 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,

00:16:31.760 but also sort of trying to establish what the European world is going to look like now that Napoleon is gone.

00:16:38.100 And 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,

00:16:49.340 and I have my notes in front of me, so I apologize if it looks like I'm not paying attention to your audience.

00:16:52.900 But states, just as human beings, often transgress laws. The only difference is the severity of their penalty.

00:16:58.800 Society has its laws just as nature and man and is with old institutions, is with old men that can never be young again. 1.00

00:17:04.280 This is the way of social order, and it cannot be different because of the law of nature.

00:17:07.760 The moral world has its storms just like the material ones, and one can never cover the world with ruins without crushing men beneath them.

00:17:14.580 And 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,

00:17:26.140 even 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,

00:17:36.360 is that like you need to have order.

00:17:37.660 And 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.

00:17:45.980 But 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,

00:17:56.220 which lasts from about 1815 to 1913, although some scholars would argue it dies in 48.

00:18:02.880 That's a discussion for a later time.

00:18:04.360 You 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.

00:18:17.480 And 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.

00:18:28.520 And 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.

00:18:39.960 And for Kissinger, you know, you can see this influence play out in some of his, you know, I suppose is more spicier quotes. 0.91

00:18:46.860 You know, most famously in relation to, say, in 1973, you know, it's a shame that both sides can't lose.

00:18:54.220 Or 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.

00:19:04.420 And 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.

00:19:23.140 And this is something that George Kennan talks about in American diplomacy, right, where America is really good at selling a warm fuzzy to itself.

00:19:29.760 Like 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.

00:19:50.280 And 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.

00:19:59.760 Right. 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.

00:20:13.280 But 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?

00:20:25.600 And 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,

00:20:41.640 his 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,

00:20:57.760 you'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.

00:21:06.280 Kissinger's looking at the 20th century on the lines of that. OK, we have this great.

00:21:11.640 Overwhelming 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.

00:21:22.740 I 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,

00:21:31.920 the 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

00:21:41.400 congressional campaign in the 2020s. Like it's an insane amount of money that you're flinging to help win an ideological battle.

00:21:48.800 And so for Kissinger, it's sort of this recognition and understanding that the world that we're in is an existential crisis.

00:21:56.260 And 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

00:22:07.260 complain 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.

00:22:16.980 So 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

00:22:23.940 because your decision response time is minutes. Congress isn't going to make a vote that quickly, never has.

00:22:30.040 And 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.

00:22:36.980 But alongside there, you understand that, you know, as he famously said, illegal is easy to do, unconstitutional might take some days.

00:22:45.540 And 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.

00:22:53.880 But that era of politics and that era of like great power statesmen, I don't think is really present with us anymore.

00:23:02.380 Outside 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.

00:23:10.700 But ideologically speaking, in the ability to wield power, he was certainly one of them.

00:23:15.760 So when does Kissinger really formally enter the scene?

00:23:20.760 Obviously, like I said, he's an academic, he's well respected and written some very important papers and whatnot on these issues.

00:23:31.460 But when does he really start having a more direct influence when it comes to American foreign policy, American diplomacy?

00:23:39.340 Sure. So I would argue that he probably really does start off during the Eisenhower administration shortly after he gets out of college.

00:23:48.380 You know, he's he served and he remained on Harvard as like a Department of Government.

00:23:51.760 He served as some educator and a faculty member.

00:23:56.360 But in 1959, he joins the Operations Coordinating Board for the National Security Council.

00:24:01.920 And 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.

00:24:11.140 But during that time, he he talked about nuclear weapons and foreign policy.

00:24:17.140 He he was looking at a nuclear doctrine at the time.

00:24:20.200 He's very critical of Eisenhower just being like, listen, we have, you know, tactical nuclear weapons.

00:24:26.700 We still have more nuclear weapons than the Soviets can produce at this current time in the early 1950s.

00:24:30.920 So why don't we just nuke as much as humanly possible?

00:24:33.980 And I'm condensing sort of this policy for the sake of our time here.

00:24:37.320 But, 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.

00:24:53.020 Because, I mean, nuclear weapons that only increase their power and capacity.

00:24:56.500 So I would start to argue in 1955, he enters the scene.

00:25:00.580 He, 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.

00:25:10.440 He works for, you know, the Department of State, the Rand Corporation, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

00:25:15.980 But, you know, he first off really gets himself more involved in politics in the 1960s, primarily because he was working for the Rockefeller Republicans.

00:25:29.900 Like 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.

00:25:40.180 Of course, Nelson Rockefeller never becomes president.

00:25:43.660 And 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.

00:25:58.160 But he meets he meets Nixon during this time.

00:26:01.520 And those two, you know, eventually get closer together, despite the fact that they never really had a like a like a really close friendship.

00:26:10.460 They're not buddy buddy, like, say, you and I are.

00:26:13.320 They're more like, you know, they're they're two men that click on a policy basis.

00:26:17.420 It's like having a really good boss.

00:26:18.740 But he had considered him one of the most dangerous men of all time to run for president.

00:26:23.460 Yeah.

00:26:23.580 However, you know, those two would end up working together.

00:26:26.640 And after Nixon becomes president in January 1969, after he's sworn in, Kissinger's appointed to the national security advisor.

00:26:34.980 And so you already have a man who has probably a great volume of work on nuclear weapons, international politics and theory.

00:26:42.540 And 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.

00:26:50.600 But, you know, everyone wants to say he comes on the scene with Nixon.

00:26:54.220 But, I mean, this guy had been involved in academia in the 50s.

00:26:58.740 I mean, he had written criticisms of Eisenhower.

00:27:01.480 He was working for the Rand Corporation.

00:27:02.980 He had worked for the Rockefeller Brothers.

00:27:04.580 Like for we talk about managerialism a lot and career interests and strivers.

00:27:10.300 And 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.

00:27:17.440 And, you know, he's got a lengthy bibliography that I think is still well worth reading to this day.

00:27:24.180 So, like you said, he he and Nixon, that's where a lot of people start the history.

00:27:28.980 He's got he's got a lot of backstory before that.

00:27:32.300 But I think that's where a lot of people are going to focus.

00:27:34.180 So we could probably go ahead and pick up there.

00:27:37.000 He and Nixon have a good working relationship.

00:27:39.380 They're not they're not friends in the sense like you're talking about.

00:27:42.200 But but they're people who who certainly work well together.

00:27:45.880 Nixon 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.

00:28:00.380 And Kissinger seems to have a different feeling, I guess, you know, the way that that he is approached.

00:28:07.920 So when we look at Kissinger's role, obviously, a lot of people are going to look at his role with Vietnam.

00:28:14.920 What is his relationship to that?

00:28:17.060 How involved was he?

00:28:18.620 You know, what parts of that are he is he directly involved in?

00:28:23.420 How much is he conventionally involved in?

00:28:25.640 And what does that say about his legacy there related direct?

00:28:28.800 Because I think that's where most liberals hate him from is, of course, the Vietnam War.

00:28:33.200 But but but what is his real role there?

00:28:36.860 What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue, a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door.

00:28:46.640 A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool.

00:28:51.520 Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered.

00:28:55.660 Download the Instacart app and enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders.

00:29:00.540 Service fees, exclusions and terms apply.

00:29:03.240 Instacart groceries that overdeliver.

00:29:06.660 Yeah, no, I think that's a really important thing to consider.

00:29:09.780 As 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.

00:29:21.020 And 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.

00:29:33.720 Like we were there basically for almost 30 years.

00:29:36.640 And it's a very important thing to consider how much of our aid is there.

00:29:40.540 So Kissinger, of course, gets in, you know, he's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during this time.

00:29:47.840 And he's he's been involved, obviously.

00:29:52.700 I mean, he visited Vietnam in 65 and in 66.

00:29:56.940 He 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.

00:30:09.360 And he was sort of this intermediary to sort of negotiate things between the two.

00:30:14.560 So 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.

00:30:38.000 Which, of course, we've kind of seen this happen before in other places in American foreign policy.

00:30:42.820 This 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.

00:30:56.680 And 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,

00:31:07.360 there's like a very thin degree of separation between just like unabashed, like Bolshevism and sort of the progressivism that we call it.

00:31:17.080 Like 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. 0.90

00:31:24.320 And they're like, they're not wrong for a variety of reasons.

00:31:27.160 I would really recommend people read a book by a Polish man named Lizard Legutko called The Demon in Democracy.

00:31:35.780 It was published in like 2018.

00:31:37.740 And 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?

00:31:47.420 And Lizard Legutko basically makes the point that like, well, because a lot of communists make really good social Democrats and really good progressive liberals.

00:31:56.380 And that's sort of the problem with our democratic system today.

00:32:00.100 And that's something that's really important to consider here.

00:32:05.040 You know, Kissinger initially didn't think South Vietnam was particularly important.

00:32:08.840 But, 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.

00:32:15.280 Like if America doesn't back its allies, what's the point?

00:32:18.100 And this sort of becomes an expansion of two key issues.

00:32:21.980 One, like the strategy of containment that is most famously authored by the late and great George Kennan,

00:32:28.020 who also lived to be like 100 something years old and a great personal influence on me,

00:32:32.280 alongside the Truman Doctrine that had really been in place about sort of just, you know, fighting communism wherever you see it.

00:32:41.520 Now, of course, Operation Menu, you know, there are there's documented opposition to it.

00:32:48.940 Ironically, Niall Ferguson or Neil Ferguson should probably clarify what that is.

00:32:53.220 Yeah. Operation Menu is the the covert strategic air command bombing of Cambodia from like basically March of 1969 to May 1970.

00:33:04.020 So it's like a year of just bombing, you know, the Cambodians. 1.00

00:33:08.380 But also like we're mainly also where the Viet and the Kong are going through the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 0.98

00:33:13.900 And of course, this is famously associated with the deaths of, you know, tens of thousands of civilians.

00:33:18.720 This is where most famously you get the case against Henry Kissinger written by the late Christopher Hitchens that like these are war crimes.

00:33:26.680 This was done covertly. This was not publicly known.

00:33:31.000 And of course, you're also bombing the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia as well.

00:33:35.600 And this is also in the backdrop that peace talks between the South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese is not going anywhere at all.

00:33:44.540 You know, like, you know, Nguyen Phan Thieu, who is the South Vietnamese president at the time.

00:33:49.760 He 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.

00:33:58.400 And 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.

00:34:08.680 But these are, of course, very heavy things. Right. And we, you know, we do have to we want to leave.

00:34:18.520 And of course, this is also in the midst of like the Pentagon papers.

00:34:24.400 The this is where, of course, the information leaks that this is what America had been doing in Cambodia.

00:34:29.200 This 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.

00:34:39.240 But, you know, Kissinger sort of recognizes that you kind of have to do it.

00:34:44.760 And, you know, bombing Cambodia will disrupt raids from the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge from attacking South Vietnam. 0.61

00:34:53.240 And 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. 0.87

00:35:06.380 I'm not defending it in the sense that, you know, this was the moral or right thing to do.

00:35:11.140 But 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.

00:35:19.960 I 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.

00:35:29.080 But I mean, like Vietnam, of course, is part of where Kissinger is, you know, is famously derided for alongside this.

00:35:36.360 Of course, you try to see Vietnamization happen. 0.95

00:35:40.080 And 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.

00:35:52.840 You 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.

00:36:00.760 That, you know, we have a lot of issues about achieving peace in South Vietnam and how to pull out.

00:36:06.840 And 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.

00:36:18.700 But 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.

00:36:33.180 Nevertheless, 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.

00:36:45.940 And, 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?

00:36:54.960 And we were sort of, you know, initially wanting the French to fight this battle.

00:36:59.860 And even, you know, Kissinger was kind of, like, ambivalent about further American presence at first.

00:37:04.640 But once we were committed, the realpolitik takes over.

00:37:08.460 And again, like, to go into, like, Kissinger and Nixon into Vietnam would deserve, like, far more time than I'm giving it here.

00:37:18.000 And I'm skipping over a lot of details.

00:37:19.520 But 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.

00:37:37.800 And 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.

00:37:48.460 But, 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.

00:38:01.640 You 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.

00:38:16.600 And so, like, this is where you get a lot of progressive and mainstream mythology behind Kissinger there.

00:38:22.260 And 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.

00:38:29.340 But I don't live in that world.

00:38:31.200 And I live in 2023 where Kissinger's died and we can look at his record.

00:38:35.620 But it's important to recognize that, like, these are the things that people really have a strong burning moral hatred for.

00:38:42.980 But at the same time, like, you can hate the, you know, what he'd done to the Cambodians, to the Vietnamese.

00:38:48.320 But, 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.

00:38:54.520 Because if not, we're being very selective with our moral outrage.

00:38:58.260 And you can hate Henry Kissinger, but I hate communists more.

00:39:03.220 Fair.

00:39:04.280 So I'm going to ask you a sprawling question here.

00:39:07.020 And feel free to answer in whatever direction you prefer.

00:39:10.500 But 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

00:39:29.560 looking to de-ravel the logic that held up those previous world-spanning kind of empires?

00:39:40.900 Is that the driving force?

00:39:43.420 Is 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?

00:39:57.400 Or 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?

00:40:12.380 And 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.

00:40:18.100 So maybe you have one explanation and he has the other.

00:40:21.160 You have one political form, he has the other.

00:40:22.420 But the goal has to be the same because when one guy builds tanks, you've got to build tanks.

00:40:27.180 And when one guy builds nukes, you've got to build nukes.

00:40:28.780 And this is just the way that World Orders are the only option.

00:40:32.880 What is driving, I guess, at the end of the day, the way that they are approaching control and intervention in these areas?

00:40:44.260 Like you said, Kissinger, in many ways, is like, well, you just have to do this.

00:40:48.300 There'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?

00:40:59.060 Is that a reality? Is that simply a mechanical reality is inescapable and can't be morally judged?

00:41:04.300 Like, what does that look like?

00:41:05.940 Sure. 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.

00:41:21.980 But I mean, from the 1990s onward, you could argue and Kissinger would argue the sort of Wilsonian idealism wins.

00:41:28.120 But 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.

00:41:41.440 But 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.

00:41:57.320 I 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.

00:42:10.360 But 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.

00:42:15.860 And 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.

00:42:24.680 And 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.

00:42:32.780 And so in doing so, you get this sort of like great American conquest of like Central and South America, these filibusters. 0.77

00:42:38.080 People 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.

00:42:52.060 It'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.

00:43:08.820 And 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.

00:43:17.300 But I mean, with respects to say Kissinger, like the 20th century writ large, there is the question of like, well, where's peace achieved?

00:43:25.780 And 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.

00:43:51.940 Like, 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?

00:44:01.800 You 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?

00:44:08.880 Same with GPS and the rest.

00:44:10.380 But 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.

00:44:32.520 Like, 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.

00:44:54.060 Not just because of how poorly managed communism is, but because communism was this sort of all-encompassing idea of, like, world revolution.

00:45:03.720 And again, this is why Sean McMeegan's 2021 book, Stalin's War, is so important that I'm going through on my channel.

00:45:09.660 But 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?

00:45:22.740 And 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.

00:45:41.960 So, 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.

00:45:51.940 The Chinese are beginning to criticize the Soviets for having a, quote-unquote, Soviet empire.

00:45:57.140 Imperialism is antithetical to communism, so what do we do?

00:45:59.820 And 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.

00:46:14.320 They'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.

00:46:31.240 And 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?

00:46:50.800 I 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.

00:47:17.400 And 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. 0.59

00:47:37.860 And 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.

00:47:50.360 And 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.

00:48:08.020 And 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.

00:48:19.860 But, 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.

00:48:37.380 We 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.

00:48:49.860 And 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?

00:49:10.060 And 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?

00:49:25.780 Whereas 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.

00:49:44.980 I was going to say, so now, yeah.

00:49:46.760 Yeah, 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.

00:50:06.140 And, 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.

00:50:24.580 And, 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.

00:50:36.380 And, 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,

00:50:49.440 that 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.

00:50:58.080 Whereas 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.

00:51:09.980 But 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.

00:51:20.040 Famously, George W. Bush and John Kerry did not want Iraq and Afghanistan to be like Vietnam. They both vividly remembered that.

00:51:28.060 And to some extent, it didn't end up like Vietnam at all. We made it more automated and less impersonal.

00:51:33.840 But nowadays, wars are compared on the basis of those conflicts to today. We don't want Ukraine to be another Syria. 0.98

00:51:39.220 We 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.

00:51:46.400 But 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.

00:52:01.500 It still had its industrial capacity. It still had a population that had been ethnically cleansed or depleted. 0.98

00:52:06.980 So 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,

00:52:13.460 and by a larger extent, the rest of sort of like the third non-Western, non-white world. 0.71

00:52:18.300 And 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.

00:52:34.000 And 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. 0.86

00:52:47.500 But, 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,

00:53:05.720 because 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.

00:53:13.280 But, 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?

00:53:19.640 And 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.

00:53:31.340 So, 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,

00:53:42.020 Henry 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?

00:53:53.540 I would argue, what's your definition of neoconservatism? I mean, neoconservatism was sort of posited by a question by Max Boot in 2003,

00:54:04.100 in an article in the Wall Street Journal asking, what is neoconservatism? And Max Boot pretty much argued that, you know,

00:54:11.940 it's primarily a foreign policy that is sort of oriented towards fighting against, you know, Islamic, 1.00

00:54:19.240 but also primarily in supporting of the state of Israel. And if you look at any comment by Henry

00:54:25.300 Kissinger towards Israel, you'll kind of realize that he was not, he was not loved by the Israelis at all,

00:54:31.320 and still isn't now that he's dead. And that's something important to consider here. Henry Kissinger,

00:54:36.860 at the very least, was more realistic in his political appraisals of the international system,

00:54:41.620 and how much power you can put leverage. Whereas nowadays, we do this in the quote unquote,

00:54:46.300 name of democracy or the name of this, but we don't have a plan outwards there. I mean,

00:54:51.040 when Henry Kissinger was still, National Security Advisory famously told, you know, Nixon that like,

00:54:58.560 the immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel is not America's like foreign policy interest,

00:55:03.540 and we shouldn't be concerned about the humanitarian obligations that we might have to them.

00:55:08.200 And this is, of course, was during a fear that the Soviets were going to pogrom what was left of

00:55:12.180 Slavic and Eastern European Jews in the Soviet Union. But to say that he's like the chief 0.96

00:55:17.000 architect of neoconservatism, I would argue that that's probably not the case, because

00:55:21.140 neoconservatism as we know it really emerges after a bunch of disaffected Trotskyists who were

00:55:28.420 primarily, you know, who were leftists originally got really disaffected by the state of affairs in

00:55:33.940 America. I mean, one of the most famous like neoconservatives, Norman Potterets and his son,

00:55:38.780 John, I mean, Norman Potterets really starts turning neoconservative after he, he sort of

00:55:44.700 looks at how the social situation gets in America. This is where you get the famous 1963 essay, you

00:55:51.980 know, you know, my Negro problem and ours. And later on, he becomes like a very chief principled,

00:55:58.600 like, you know, conservative Judeo-Christian values type guy, we have to support Israel,

00:56:02.140 we have to support American values abroad, for little more than ideological and some extent,

00:56:07.560 like ethno-narcissistic reasons. But to say Henry Kissinger was like the chief architect of what

00:56:13.040 that would become, I would really suggest that just people look at Kissinger's record compared to say,

00:56:19.060 you know, David Frum or any sort of like David French neoconservatism today, like he, you know,

00:56:25.260 there's not a, you could argue there's a link between Douglas Murray and Henry Kissinger, but there's

00:56:29.280 not, that link is not as strong as you want it to be.

00:56:32.020 Hmm. All right, well, we're going to go ahead and pivot to the questions of the people. We got a few

00:56:37.740 over here. But before we do, sir, where should people check out your excellent work?

00:56:42.400 People can find me over on YouTube, Odyssey, Telegram, all podcast platforms, Libsyn and such

00:56:48.300 at findmyfriends.net slash the Prudentialist. Right now I'm going through the entirety of Sean McMeekin's

00:56:54.800 2021 book, Stalin's War, New History of World War II. I've got some great guests that have joined me as we

00:57:00.440 read through and discuss the history of this conflict with a fresh pair of eyes and understanding

00:57:04.940 the Soviet Union. Outside of that, I cover digital ecology, international relations, and the ongoing

00:57:11.400 culture war as we know it. And as always, Warren, thank you so much for having me.

00:57:14.800 Absolutely, man. No, I learned a lot. This is something that, of course, I knew the outline of,

00:57:18.660 I knew the basics of, but I wanted to go into a deeper dive, you know, like I said, just that context so

00:57:24.160 that we're not just looking at the McNuggets, the things that get filtered through the internet or through,

00:57:28.500 you know, different slogans. And so I'm glad that you took us on a tour so we'd have

00:57:32.740 a better grasp of what Kissinger was about and what his legacy is. All right, guys, let's look at

00:57:39.020 your questions here. We've got a Tismo Prime for $1.99. Thank you very much, sir. Y'all the homies

00:57:46.280 for real, for real. Well, despite your Zoomer appellation, I appreciate your chat. Thank you very

00:57:52.360 much. And Cooper Weirdo here for $2. Thanks, guys. Very cool. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Yeah,

00:57:58.040 I had a good time. Appreciate, uh, Prude coming on and glad that you guys enjoyed it. All right.

00:58:04.500 Well, we're going to go ahead and get out of here, guys. But before we do, of course, if this is your

00:58:08.420 first time on this channel, please make sure that you go ahead and subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show

00:58:13.020 on your favorite podcast platforms and make sure that you go ahead and like and subscribe to this

00:58:19.480 channel if it's your first time coming by here. Uh, I think I have a new article coming up on the

00:58:25.000 Blizz right now. So if you'd like to go read that, you can go check that out. Thank you for coming by,

00:58:29.680 guys. Thanks to Prude once again for coming on. And as always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - December 06, 2023

The Complicated Legacy of Henry Kissinger ｜ Guest： The Prudentialist ｜ 12⧸6⧸23

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript