Henry Kissinger ( Bavaria , May 27 , 1923 – Connecticut , November 29 , 2023 ) was an American politician and terrorist. He served as Secretary of State under the corrupt President Richard Nixon . He left office when Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency in January 1977.
He was an influential foreign policy analyst and consultant for numerous multinational companies with investments abroad. His influence on the history of Latin America and the Caribbean was disastrous, due to his involvement in state terrorism policies and his collusion with the most notorious criminals and repressors on the continent.
Biographical summary
Born in Germany in 1923 , he emigrated to the United States in 1938. He entered government service during the Kennedy administration , but began to gain prominence alongside Lyndon B. Johnson , who appointed him foreign affairs adviser. He became Secretary of State in 1973 , forming a sinister duo with Richard Nixon .
Political life
An article by Jim Lobe (IPS analyst) published on the Rebelión website on March 28, 2002, describes how Kissinger approved the murder and disappearance of 30,000 opponents during the Argentine civil-military dictatorship (1976-1983) when he was Secretary of State of the United States, according to declassified intelligence documents.
In talks with his Argentine counterpart, Kissinger said that Washington supported the efforts of the “military junta” to solve “the terrorist problem,” according to the documents that were studied by journalists Martin Edwin Andersen and John Dinges.
Similarly, efforts by the then US ambassador in Buenos Aires to reduce repression were frustrated by Kissinger’s reluctance to back him.
The documents were declassified amid growing controversy over Kissinger’s foreign policy in the 1970s. Kissinger served as President Richard Nixon ‘s National Security Adviser , then as his Secretary of State, and finally served in the same capacity in the administration of Gerald Ford , following Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 over the Watergate corruption scandal .
The former Secretary of State, who was ousted from his post when Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency in January 1977, was an influential foreign policy analyst and consultant to numerous multinational companies with investments abroad.
Terrorist actions
In a book published in 2001, journalist Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) claimed that Kissinger should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in formulating Washington ‘s policies against Vietnam , Chile , Argentina , Cyprus and Indonesia between 1969 and 1977.
On Kissinger’s responsibility for the horrors of the dictatorships in the Southern Cone (southern South America), Patricia Derian , Secretary of Human Rights in the Carter administration , said a few months after the Secretary of State left his post:
It sickens me that with an imperial wave of the hand, an American can sentence people to death on the basis of a cheap whim. […] As time goes by, I see the traces of Kissinger in a lot of countries. It is the repression of the democratic ideal.
Patricia Derian
In 1998, American writer Gore Vidal responded to a question about the arrest of Chilean dictator and murderer Augusto Pinochet :
Henry Kissinger.
Pinochet will sing if he is prosecuted. And if he is, I hope that Henry Kissinger will be arrested and tried for what he did with Chile and Cambodia . […] I believe that Kissinger is the biggest free war criminal on the planet. If Kissinger is arrested, there will be panic in the United States, because the country is very compromised. We have been at it continuously since 1953, overthrowing governments and assassinating leaders.
Terrorist foreign policy
What has been discovered about the meeting between Kissinger and Pinochet on June 8, 1976 is truly appalling . Kissinger explains to the dictator the pressures from Congress, dominated by Democrats, for the United States government to cut its aid to Chile if Pinochet did not stop the permanent violation of human rights. “We oppose the demands of Congress,” Kissinger assured him, although he acknowledged that the “problem” surrounding human rights and the protests of the legislators “make our relations difficult.”
After justifying himself to the dictator for being forced to speak before the members of the OAS about human rights, the Secretary of State “consoled” Pinochet by telling him that he would speak about this matter “in general and in a global context,” and that he would refer to Chile in only “two paragraphs.”
My speech is not directed against Chile. In the United States, as you know, we sympathize with what you are trying to do here. My opinion is that you are a victim of all the leftist groups in the world, and that your greatest sin is having overthrown a government, that of the socialist Salvador Allende , which was heading towards communism.
Nobel Prize
In 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . Since his retirement he has devoted himself to his business and the writing of his memoirs. He has been a frequent advisor to subsequent American presidents on issues of the common bullying of Americans in international politics.
