He was arguably the most influential architect of
US foreign policy since the war, but, as Bob Chaundy of the BBC's News
Profiles Unit reports, attempts to question Henry Kissinger about
terrorist crimes have put the darker side of his career under the
spotlight.
Henry Kissinger once said that "90% of politicians give the other 10% a
bad reputation".
Throughout his career, this German Jewish emigré who began his working
life in a shaving brush factory in New York, rose to become a Harvard
professor and then assumed control of America's foreign policy under
Presidents Nixon and Ford, has bitterly divided opinion over which of
these two percentage categories he belongs to.
;)
He had a hold over President
Nixon
|
Kissinger became Richard Nixon's national security
adviser in 1969. It was testament to his mastery of political in-fighting
and his increasing hold over the president that, in all but the final year
of the Nixon presidency, he ran foreign policy over the head of the
Secretary of State, William Rogers.
By this policy, say his supporters, he made the world a safer place. He
was the man who effected détente with the Soviet Union. He opened up the
way to Nixon's visit to China. He negated the Communist threat in
America's back yard, most notably in Chile.
With his famous "shuttle diplomacy" after the 1973 Yom Kippur war in
the Middle-East, he brokered the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
He was the secret negotiator at the Paris peace talks which ended the
Vietnam War for which he was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. And he
was the man who kept American foreign policy on the rails after the
Watergate scandal and maintained its momentum under President Ford.
He assumed almost complete control of
foreign affairs during the Nixon
years
|
His wisdom is still sought after. His punditry on
the current state of American foreign policy is aired by TV networks
everywhere, and he is a regular on the highly lucrative lecture circuit.
Of course, say his defenders, there were times when American policy
under Kissinger was more motivated by global balance of power and national
interest at the expense of human rights, but, as the Times put it in a
recent editorial, "the world was polarised, and fighting communism
involved hard choices and messy compromises".
This messy business, though, is what has made him a highly
controversial figure. His critics refer to Kissinger's complicity in the
illegal carpet-bombing of neutral Cambodia, designed to deprive North
Vietnam of troops and supplies, but which sowed the seeds for the
murderous Pol Pot regime.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Seymour Hersh, in a 1983 biography,
Kissinger, the Price of Power, argued that this bombing, moreover,
jeopardised America's atomic security.
Kissinger sanctioned the illegal bombing
of Cambodia
|
British writer, Christopher Hitchens, in his recent
book The Trial of Henry Kissinger, argues that Kissinger is a war
criminal. He claims he connived with brutal regimes, allied to the US,
most notably Pakistan, Greece and Indonesia, to embark on savage acts of
repression.
Most notably, charges relating to Latin America have returned to haunt
Henry Kissinger. The CIA's involvement in the coup which toppled the
elected Chilean leader Salvador Allende and brought General Pinochet to
power, has been long well-documented.
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist
due to the irresponsibility of its people," Kissinger once famously
uttered.
But a number of factors have brought these old chestnuts back into
public prominence.
Chileans demonstrating against the
brutality of the Pinochet
regime
|
Documents recently released by the CIA, strengthen
previously-held suspicions that Kissinger was actively involved in the
establishment of Operation Condor, a covert plan involving six Latin
American countries including Chile, to assassinate thousands of political
opponents.
At the same time, the success of international tribunals in bringing
suspected war criminals such as Yugoslavia's former leader Slobodan
Milosevic to trial has created a new impetus for righting the serious
wrongs of the past.
The new International Criminal Court, ratified this month, is a de
facto message to tyrants and torturers everywhere that they can run but
can't hide.
The Spanish judge, Baltazar Garzon, pursued the extradition to Spain of
General Pinochet while the former Chilean dictator was in London.
Now this same judge is trying to question Kissinger about the deaths of
Spanish nationals murdered and tortured as part of Operation Condor. A
French judge is doing the same in relation to murdered French citizens.
Kissinger is highly sought after on the
lecture
circuit
|
Kissinger has admitted that mistakes were "quite
possibly" made by the administrations in which he served. But he has
questioned whether, 30 years after the event, "courts are the appropriate
means by which determination is made".
None of the judges, so far, have suggested that they want to do
anything more than question Henry Kissinger. If it ever came to a trial,
the prosecution would be hampered by Kissinger's obsession with secrecy.
Not only did he execute much of his foreign policy by the back door,
when he left office in 1977, he deposited most of his personal papers in
the US Library of Congress. They will remain sealed until five years after
his death.
