There is a lot of talk about Kissinger these days because of his birthday…I’d like to present a few thoughts on some things he is accused of having been involved in;

1. Ankara’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974. The result was the ethnic-cleansing of Greeks from northern Cyprus. This was done so that “NATO member” Turkey could have more power…a trade-off supposedly to get it to help on Soviet issues; Ankara today continues to abuse the West this way, preventing Sweden from joining NATO and ethnically cleansing Afrin, while pretending to be against Russia, while it actually works with Russia and Iran. “Realism” helped create this problem, emboldening a country to become an adversary.

2. The acceptance of the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor. People were ethnically cleansed and the vicious dictatorship in Indonesia got more power. This was also to empower the extremists in Indonesia “against communism.” Once again millions suffered for a fantasy. Years later Indonesia had blasphemy laws and the rest of the usual far-right list of laws and there’s no evidence that letting it butcher people has made the world safer or it more pro-western.

3. Backing Pakistan in 1971. The US supported Pakistan militarily against India, helping to eventually prop-up an extremist military and then Islamist dictatorship and horrid human rights abuses. This was also under the paradigm of “helping Pakistan to get to China and balance the communists.” Once again, a dictatorship that became a massive exporter of extremism was backed against a democracy (India)…minorities were crushed and in the end the US ended up in Afghanistan backing extremists who ended up as Al Qaeda. Much as Ankara ended up backing extremists who became HTS and ISIS, one sees the arc of history: Undermining democracy, supporting religious extremists, destroying countries. India was forced to rely on Soviet arms, while US arms flowed to Pakistan. India today is more suspicious of West because it wonders why the West backed dictatorships and even extremist groups against New Delhi. In Bangladesh there was genocide against minorities.

4. Working with China: The US began a long flirtation with Beijing in the 1970s, eventually helping Beijing become an economic powerful and slowly consume large parts of the world economy. Today this is seen as a disaster, but it is likely too late. The pandemic and the movement of the world’s economy away from the West, away from the dollar, toward China, began in the 1970s to “balance” Russia. To “balance” Russia, everywhere in the world the US invited abuses and extremism. Short term goals led to long-term ruin.

5. Using and abandoning Kurds 1972-1975. Kurds in northern Iraq were backed against Saddam’s regime because it was seen as pro-Soviet; the Shah of Iran was seen as pro-western. As we now know the Shah fell from power; Saddam then got western backing against Iran and then turned on the West. Another example of short term goals, ending with genocide (of Kurds in this case) and then ending with the regime being empowered against the West.

6. Later “realism”…excusing Moscow’s invasion of Georgia because “Russia must not be isolated” emboldened Moscow to go into Syria and then invade Ukraine. Because of the ideology of not “isolating Russia” and not ever harming Russia…Moscow got total impunity to invade and destroy, much as other countries were given that “right” from Ankara to Indonesia.

It’s worth understanding this trend in US policy as essentially: Support any dictator and religious extremist to destabilize other countries, destroy democracy, genocide minorities and then empower a bunch of dictatorships that will be anti-western and anti-American later…lost out everywhere in the world and end with the US isolated and all the authoritarians getting wealthy and powerful…selling out minorities because of hatred of morals and values, in order to get short term gains, by jettisoning minorities for the majority, but ending up with the majoritarian regimes hating the West anyway.

I can’t think of one policy since 1968 that has panned out. It’s just a long list of failed beliefs that the US will support “power” and ignore “values” and in the end, get neither.