What Is Henry Kissinger?



(image via David Levine/TheNation)


What is Henry Kissinger? Granted, we ought to add "politically" on the tail end of that question else we get answers like: "Hideous, Toad-Beastling," or "His Dark, Amphibious Majesty (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment)."

We ask because yesterday's think piece in the Gray Lady about the galactic battle for McCain's ear placed Kissinger in squarely the Realpolitik camp. And historically Kissinger has all but aligned himself in the Bismarkian-Richlieu school of Handling Your Shit. But is he? Kissinger, it seems, as the years go on, is not so much of "The Morganthau Group," but rather an energetic student in the I-Want-Proximity-To-Power-At-All-Costs" school of thought.

His Dark Amphibious Majesty, Kissinger has toadying up to the well-heeled since he was at Harvard, running the foreign policy pseudo-magazine Confluence. As editor he solicited pieces from luminaries like William F. Buckley, Jr., using the Harvard insignia like Cardinal Richelieu's pectoral cross (Averted Gaze). And when Buckley introduced him to Nixon, Kissinger took it from there. And we, and the planet, have been paying ever since. From Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy:

"There are a lot of interesting tidbits in Elisabeth Bumiller and Larry Rohter's article about how various Republican foreign-policy realists are concerned that the dreaded neocons are winning the battle for John McCain's ear. McCain advisors Randy Scheunemann and Robert Kagan seem eager to downplay any such split, and they point to the fact that Henry Kissinger, a realist par excellence, is a close confidant of the Arizona senator.

"I think Bumiller and Rohter missed a chance to point out something about Kissinger. When it comes to subjects such as great-power relations, Kissinger still sounds like his old realist self. He is critical of McCain's recent hard line on Russia, for instance. But on the key foreign-policy issue of the 2008 campaign, Iraq, Henry the K sounds a lot more like Max Boot than he does Brent Scowcroft. As Ron Suskind has reported, Kissinger has been a key voice urging the Bush administration to stay in Iraq for the long haul."

Kissinger is beyond ideological philosophy, he is a man driven entirely by the pursuit of Power. That is the true difference between Henry and The Realists. For Realists, at the end of the day, are Patriots, carefully maneuvering through History, navigating the best course for their beloved country. Kissinger's ship of state hugs the craggy shore of Henry. Kissinger, a man so self-centered as to have never outgrown his childhood accent, just navigates History for his own fucking self-aggrandizement.

And suckers all are We.