When historians describe the years 1969 to 1976, the name of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger will emerge as more influential than Presidents Richard Nixon or Gerald Ford.
Because Kissinger is probably the hardest working, the wittiest, and the most popular public official in the United States, criticism of him is rare. The beautiful girls in the 1974 Miss Universe contest voted him “the greatest person in the world today.” But will his legacy be good or bad for the United States?
The chief reason Kissinger rates so high in public opinion polls is his name identification. This is partially due to his constant participation in newsworthy happenings, his shuttle diplomacy, and his meetings with VIPs all over the world.
His coverage is due even more, however, to the fact that he made himself the fountainhead of all important news on foreign policy and national defense. He gathered the strings of power into his own hands through his position on the National Security Council and his chairmanship of all important national security committees.
As all roads once led to Rome, all channels of our many intelligence-gathering facilities led to Kissinger. Its unlikely that there ever was a time in our history when so few people had access to sensitive information.
Kissinger’s statements to the American people are always generously laced with phrases that connote stability such as “new world order,” “structure of peace,” and “balance of power.” Let’s examine the high points of Kissinger’s eight-year stewardship to see if these words are substance or illusion.
The SALT Agreements of 1972 were negotiated by Kissinger and proclaimed to the world as a device to “stop the spiraling arms race.” They did, indeed, stop the United States from racing. Regrettably, they did not stop the Soviets, who have built and deployed five new series of intercontinental missiles since then.
The Helsinki Agreement of 1975 was negotiated by Kissinger proclaimed to the world as a means of getting the Soviets to permit freer movement of people and ideas in Eastern Europe. However, only put the stamp of respectability and permanence on the borders closed by Soviet troops along the Iron Curtain.
The Paris Agreement on Vietnam of January 1971 was concocted by Kissinger and proclaimed to the world as a promise of peace. Even while he was accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for this feat, its inherent defects were obvious. When Kissinger agreed to allow North Vietnamese troops to remain in South Vietnam while U.S. troops pulled out, he sealed the doom of Southeast Asia.
The fragile peace that Kissinger has wrought in the Middle East is laced together with tremendous amounts of American aid, first be one side, then to the other. Yet Israel would not heave needed our aid if Kissinger bed not snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in 1973.
After Egypt committed the surprise Yom Kippur attack, the Israelis countered with a daring and successful military maneuver that trapped the Egyptian army on the wrong side of the Suez Canal, cut off from reinforcements. Kissinger then forced the Israelis to give up their victory and release the Egyptian army.
It is no wonder that, after Jimmy Carter was elected last month, former Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan remarked: “It is satisfying to know that Kissinger will be replaced.”
Finally, there was the African adventure. Kissinger did nothing to oppose the Cuban conquest with Soviet weapons of Angola, but he labored long and hard to overthrow the anti-Communist government of Rhodesia, even offering millions of American tax dollars to countries invading Rhodesia such as Communist Mozambique.
As Kissinger leaves office next month, the question is: will the “new world order” that he has been negotiating collapse like Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella?
