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Spring 1999 cover

National Observer Home > No. 42 - Spring 1999 > Book Review

Years of Renewal

by Henry Kissinger

London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, pp. 1120, with index; also published in the United States by Simon & Schuster.

This is the third and final volume of the memoirs of Dr. Henry Kissinger, who served for five and a half years as National Security Adviser and then as Secretary of State to President Nixon and President Ford.

Dr. Kissinger was at the centre of world affairs for almost six years, during which time he spoke with and attended meetings between some of the most important international figures, such as Leonid Brezhnev, Harold Wilson, Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher, Giscard d'Estaing, Tito, Mao Zedong and Deng. His first-hand reports of these meetings are invaluable, as are his disclosures of what were said and done by Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Dr. Kissinger's writings are highly egocentric. For example, of ninety-eight photographs included, eighty-five show Dr. Kissinger, usually conspicuously in the presence of world leaders. Likewise events and conversations are presented in such a way as to show him in the most favourable light. Indeed, the conclusion is unavoidable that Dr. Kissinger's wish to show himself well, as a successful world statesman, has rendered himself partial to a high degree. Probably each episode to which he refers should be seen as censored and adjusted where necessary to present himself favourably.

Even despite discounting for these matters of vanity this volume is interesting and immensely informative.

For example, Dr. Kissinger starts by visiting again the traumas of the last year of President Nixon, and the extraordinary pressures for his impeachment generated by an overwhelmingly Democrat press. The very groups who most recently have been assiduous in supporting President Clinton were those who relentlessly pursued Richard Nixon to the point of resignation and who thereafter, thwarted by his pardon by President Ford, were responsible for the election of President Carter, the weakest American president since the last World War.

In regard to Vietnam Dr. Kissinger is particularly concerned to justify events to which he was a party. It will be recalled that through a combination of ineffective military operations and a brilliant propaganda campaign by the Communists, the Americans were persuaded to abandon South Vietnam, which had been invaded by the Communist North. There will always be debate whether, as a matter of realpolitik, this withdrawal was appropriate in the interests of the United States.

What is clear however is that it represented a cynical abandonment of the South Vietnamese, who had lost hundreds of thousands in a grinding and devastating war. After supporting them, the United States simply abandoned them (just as it has been prepared to abandon other allies when public opinion has seemed to make this cause expedient).

It is hence distasteful to find Dr. Kissinger claiming that "the United States had withdrawn its forces from Vietnam on honourable terms". In fact, as he conceded elsewhere, "Congress cut off all aid to the desperate peoples of South Vietnam and Cambodia and to the African forces resisting the Soviet/Cuban intervention in Angola". As Dr. Kissinger stated, immediately after the Congress decision abandoning Angola, "the Soviet airlift resumed at an accelerated pace"; and in the next month "Cuban forces in Angola doubled".

Another example of the unreliability of the United States as an ally is found with Chile. In 1970 President Allende became President after receiving only 36 per cent of votes. At that time he announced that he would create a revolution in Chile on the lines of Cuba, and "overthrow" the "bourgeouis state, at the present moment". He armed "thousands of extralegal militia with Cuban weapons" and promulgated totalitarian decrees that were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on 26 May 1973. A communist coup d'etat was being implemented, in view of which, very properly, the army under General Pinochet intervened. Doubtless the measures taken by the army went beyond what was ideally desirable, but what was in question was a Cuban-style revolution which would, as in Cuba, have involved loss of life and repression on a vast scale.

Nonetheless it was not long before in the United States "liberals" like Senator Edward Kennedy attacked the Pinochet government in a way they had never attacked Communist regimes. As Dr. Kissinger noted,

"We were also highly conscious of the double standard that was being applied to post-war Chile. No radical anti-American revolution suffered the vituperation launched against the clumsy authoritarians in Santiago. The European left's venomous hatred of Pinochet was not matched by any comparable condemnation of Castro, or of the truly brutal regime in Vietnam. Sweden's socialist government cut off aid to Chile within forty-eight hours of the coup, before any human rights violations were apparent, but it had shown no such fastidiousness vis-a-vis the repressive leaders in Hanoi, whom, in fact, Sweden had been supporting politically and economically for nearly a decade. Why were we being urged to moderate left-wing autocrats by showering them with economic aid while the remedy for Chile's right-wing abuses was to be total ostracism?"

Dr. Kissinger's account reflects the fact that with powerful left-wing politicians like Senators Edward Kennedy (against whom there is the additional consideration of hypocrisy) and Frank Church emerging from time to time and a powerful and unreliable media, the United States has proved itself to be an uncertain and even treacherous ally. General Pinochet may be pardoned for saying to the United States that "you have a punitive system for your friends".

Dr. Kissinger's discussion of world affairs is of particular interest to Australians. Australia has depended upon the United States as an ally and protector, and indeed during the Second World War and the Cold War there was a partial co-incidence of interests.

But a consideration of its political system demonstrates that the United States is entirely unreliable as an ally. Long-standing friends may be abandoned on spurious grounds; uninformed populism may lead to inexplicable reversals of policy.

There is much danger in having faith in perceived American policies.

I. C. F. Spry


National Observer No. 42 - Spring 1999