Henry Kissinger Pix credit X Spike Cohen
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, November 30: Historian Greg Gardin told ‘Democracy Now’ that Henry Kissinger, who died on Thursday, represented the political bankruptcy of the last century in the US. Diplomatic community in India credits Kissinger of turning the Democrats into the US as slaves to his persuasion of “international relations based on realism”.
Even after he demitted the office as Secretary of the State as well as the national security advisory in the most turbulent parts of the history of the US in the 1970s, Kissinger shadow loomed large on the American presidency as late as that of Barack Obama. From Bangladesh to Cambodia, from Vietnam to Latin America, Kissinger oversaw bloodletting of an unprecedented scale that could have a peer only among the pre-mdieval tribal leaders from Mongolia who spilled blood from Asia to Europe.
In one of the most controversial decision, Kissinger,100, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize even while his direct involvement in the bombing in Vietnam and Cambodia killed people in millions. Historians, who have written several books on Kissinger, credit the top aide of Nixon and Ford for having scripted coups in Latin American countries to install dictators.
Shashank, former foreign secretary of India, told The Raisina Hills in a discussion that “Kissinger had advised Obama to instruct China to take care of two naughty boys, India and Pakistan, in the aftermath of the nuclear tests by the two countries”. Kissinger was a companion of Pakistan in committing genocide in Bangladesh. This was documented by Gary Bass in his much acclaimed book ‘The Blood Telegram’ with the New York Times writing: “This is a dark and amazing tale, an essential reminder of the devastation wrought by the hardhearted policy and outright bigotry that typified much of the diplomacy of the cold war. It is not a tale without heroes, though; a number of American diplomats — most especially a man named Archer Blood — risked and even sacrificed their careers by refusing to knuckle under to the White House and telling the truth about what was happening on the ground.”
Declassified papers reveal that Kissinger collaborated with Chinese rulers to exploit the loopholes in arranging fast-computing computers to Beijing even while the law barred such transfer to Russia. He was an ally of China. In July this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping rolled a red-carpet for him when relations with the US hit the low while Beijing pressed to claw back to normalcy and counter de-couple theme dominating the American politics.
Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh who has chronicled the events of 1970s when late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was aided by P. N. Hksar. “PN Haksar, while an admirer of Kissinger’s intellectual prowess, felt that he lacked moral fibre and sensitivity to democratic processes,” wrote Ramesh in a post on X.
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