November 29th marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Henry Kissinger, a man regarded by many to be one of the shrewdest diplomatic minds of the 20th century. Indeed, there has hardly been an individual in American history whose influence over US foreign policy and global affairs was so complete, and whose expertise was as coveted and revered. Simultaneously, there has hardly been an American with as much blood on his hands, and whose exclusive quantity of human rights abuses rivals the world’s worst despots and tyrants.
Kissinger, who served as the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the Nixon and Ford administrations, was responsible for manufacturing an American foreign policy of ruthless pragmatism in which the lives of civilians were a price gladly worth paying for the sake of US geopolitical advantage. His realpolitik, when it came to conducting diplomacy, was responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people, and his extensive record of human rights violations was enough to lock him up for many lifetimes. But the distinguished position he held in the American political elite, and the reliable immunity that US citizenship often grants the worst criminals, ensured that he would never have to answer for his appalling crimes.
The exhaustive list of Kissinger’s transgressions far exceeds what can be included in this article, but I’ll just list some of the most flagrant:
Kissinger was the chief architect of the carpet bombing campaign furtively undertaken by the United States from 1969 to 1973 against the countries of Cambodia and Laos, extending the already disastrous Vietnam War into those countries too. Over the course of those four years, Kissinger personally authorized almost 4,000 bombing raids on Cambodia alone, the targets of which were often densely populated areas. The bombings were done entirely in secret, without the consultation of Congress and in violation of the US Constitution and international law.
The lowest estimated casualties are 50,000 in Laos and 150,000 in Cambodia, though many put the true figure in the hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, the instability that was left in its wake allowed for the ruthless Khmer Rouge, led by Pol-Pot, to take power in Cambodia and slaughter a further 2 million people, a quarter of the country’s population. The incessant dropping of pesticides and napalm during this 4 year period destroyed entire ecosystems and perpetuated a health crisis that caused widespread birth defects for hundreds of thousands of children, the effects of which Indochina still reels from today.
Staying in the region of Southeast Asia, the tiny nation of East Timor is another victim of Kissinger’s depravity. In 1975, East Timor’s much stronger neighbor, Indonesia, headed by the brutal General Suharto, saw an easy opportunity to exploit the unraveling Portuguese empire, of which East Timor was a part, and launched a military invasion to annex the country.
A genocide ensued in which 200,000 Timorese people were slaughtered, an astounding number for such a small nation. Henry Kissinger had met with Suharto in Indonesia the day before the invasion and gave the green light for it to commence. Throughout the military campaign and after, Kissinger, against US law, supplied the Indonesian forces with 90% of its arms.
Leaving the region but remaining in Asia, Bangladesh is the next country inflicted with genocide under Kissinger’s watch. In 1971, the leader of Pakistan, General Yahya Khan, deployed armed forces to Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) to quell mass protests against his own electoral corruption. In a move of sordid expediency characteristic of his foreign policy, Kissinger convinced Nixon to support Khan to preserve their convenient alliance with Pakistan and again funneled weapons to Pakistani forces.
By the end of the military occupation, the most modest figures estimate that half a million Bengalis were killed, though the real number is likely 2 to 3 million. While the carnage was taking place, the US consul general in Bangladesh, Archer Blood, sent desperate telegrams to Washington reporting the mass murder occurring around him. Kissinger repeatedly ignored them.
Entering our own hemisphere, in 1973, Kissinger played an outsized role in engineering a coup against the democratic government of Chile. The election of Salvador Allende, a socialist, as Chile’s president in 1970 was intolerable to Kissinger, and he ensured it was undone. When the commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, René Schneider, refused to use the military to prevent Allende from taking office, Kissinger colluded with the CIA and bribed kidnappers to depose him. Schneider was killed in the kidnapping.
When this failed to stop Allende from assuming the presidency, Kissinger again surreptitiously plotted a coup with Nixon and the CIA, which took place in 1973. The coup installed Augusto Pinochet, the leader of the junta which overthrew Allende, as the new leader of Chile, inaugurating a brutal 17-year proto-fascist regime which saw the death, disappearance and torture of thousands of people, including two American citizens.
There are many more offenses which could be added to this list. I omitted, for example, Kissinger’s role in Iraq, Angola, Cyprus, Argentina and others for purposes of length. The potential criminal cases against him, if ever brought before an international tribunal, were beyond damning. Kissinger, though, was never tried for his war crimes. Instead, he lived to the age of 99 not only as a free citizen, but an eminent one, whose counsel was lauded by members of the political elite like Hillary Clinton. The complete immunity with which Kissinger was able to dictate his unscrupulous and lethal foreign policy for over 50 years remains a great stain on the American conscience, and exposes a glaring disparity in who ultimately gets prosecuted for war crimes.
There exists now in international law a double standard in which the enactment of justice is conditional on the degree of power held by the individual or government accused. Leaders in prominent countries pontificate about upholding human rights and promoting democracy, and use their strength and influence to coerce those who don’t, but happily exempt themselves when it comes to their own offenses.
While Kissinger enjoyed a lavish life as a fugitive from justice, retribution was resoundingly delivered to Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Saddam Hussein of Iraq, individuals who should no doubt have faced consequences for their respective crimes against humanity, but whose prosecution was an indication not of their uniquely egregious crimes, but of their lack of significant international power.
Today, the enforcement of international law continues to remain partial and ineffective. As I write this, Vladimir Putin is ravaging the country of Ukraine, for which he has his own pending warrant for arrest issued by the ICC, but to which he will almost certainly never have to answer thanks to Russia’s advantageous global position. Last week, the ICC announced an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his role in war crimes committed against the people of Gaza. Again, the move is noble but largely symbolic (not to say belated), as Israel isn’t even a member of the ICC.
Meanwhile, of the 54 people the ICC has ever indicted, 47 are African, which can be explained not by a disproportionate violation of human rights on the part of Africa, but by a disproportionate lack of power. While the Rome Statute may have been written with good intentions, its inability to enforce its rulings means that, at best, the apprehension of war criminals relies on global superpowers to impose, and is limited to third-world tyrants.
It's a shame that Kissinger was never taken to the Hague and tried for his crimes, and his death cemented with it the death of justice too. The one-year anniversary of his passing should serve as a reckoning for the United States on the permission it gives to figures like Kissinger to get away with the most unimaginable crimes, and the mockery this makes of the profoundly American idea that no one is above the law.
If the US hopes to reverse its declining global image and reassert its claim to be an agent for good, it must show the world that it is willing to apply to itself the same righteous principles it demands of others, and will hold accountable American citizens whose crimes require redress. Until then, the very idea of justice, and the inherent concept of its equal application, will continue to hang in the balance.
Leo Goldberg is a Trinity first-year.
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