← Back to context

Comment by cocacola1

2 years ago

I can understand why people despise Kissinger, but he’s a pretty interesting figure on the whole. Not the best diplomat or Secretary of State we’ve had, but certainly a seminal figure in American foreign policy.

40 comments

cocacola1

Reply
anigbrowl  2 years ago

Certainly, but lots of terrible people are also interesting. Kissinger strikes me as a prime example of Lord Acton's dictum at how power corrupts; by any reasonable standard he committed absolutely egregious acts, but because they inured to the USA's strategic benefit, there has never been any political will to hold him accountable. It's like how the US promotes the idea of a 'rules based international order' but habitually diminishes the UN, refuses to participate in the International Criminal Court and so on.

  • protocolture  2 years ago

    Theres a semi apocryphal story that one of Kissingers friends warned him before he started working under clearance, that once he had access to "Intelligence" that other people didn't have, he would lose his humanity to the spooks, and assume he was smarter than the people without clearance. Which seems to be sort of what happened.

    • reducesuffering  2 years ago

      > assume he was smarter than the people without clearance

      Idk, it's actually wild how HN is almost entirely "Kissinger is a war criminal" meme-ing with little actual specific policy substance behind it. Meanwhile, if you read any Kissinger, you'd realize he understood history and the international relations better than 99% of these comments. Truly, word-for-word basis you will undoubtedly learn far more about history reading World Order than you will these HN comments. Personally, I have little hope in their uneducated decisions in a position of astronomical consequences and no 20/20 hindsight.

      24 replies →