Henry Kissinger is finally dead. That deserves celebration but the system that created him is still thriving. If there were justice, Kissinger would have been beaten to death by Anthony Bourdain long ago. Sadly he lived out a full live to the age of 100, far longer than his millions of victims across the world.
Since Adolf Hitler and King Leopold II are both dead, Henry Kissinger was one of the most notorious living war criminals. I could talk about his crimes here, but Jacobin has thoroughly covered them in their new book Only the Good Die Young. Even though the ruling class venerates him, anyone with any knowledge of history knows the truth about Kissinger. Upon learning of Kissinger’s passing, President Biden released a statement saying:
I’ll never forget the first time I met Dr. Kissinger. I was a young Senator, and he was Secretary of State—giving a briefing on the state of the world. Throughout our careers, we often disagreed. And often strongly. But from that first briefing — his fierce intellect and profound strategic focus was evident.
It is interesting that Biden refers to their disagreements, as the latest one was over Biden’s proxy war in Ukraine. In December 2022, Kissinger called for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia in order to end the war. In an article for The Spectator titled How to avoid another world war he wrote:
The goal of a peace process would be twofold: to confirm the freedom of Ukraine and to define a new international structure, especially for Central and Eastern Europe. Eventually Russia should find a place in such an order.
The preferred outcome for some is a Russia rendered impotent by the war. I disagree. For all its propensity to violence, Russia has made decisive contributions to the global equilibrium and to the balance of power for over half a millennium. Its historical role should not be degraded. Russia’s military setbacks have not eliminated its global nuclear reach, enabling it to threaten escalation in Ukraine. Even if this capability is diminished, the dissolution of Russia or destroying its ability for strategic policy could turn its territory encompassing 11 time zones into a contested vacuum. Its competing societies might decide to settle their disputes by violence. Other countries might seek to expand their claims by force. All these dangers would be compounded by the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons which make Russia one of the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
The Biden regime dismissed his call to avoid World War 3 as unreasonable and went on to continue arms shipments to Ukraine including cluster bombs, a personal favorite of Kissinger’s Cambodia bombing. Biden and Poroshenko made a great pair just like Kissinger and Pinochet.
In June 2023 at a campaign reception, Biden said, “I’m going to say something outrageous. I think I know as much about American foreign policy as anybody living, including Dr. Kissinger. That’s what I’ve done my whole life — for the last 270 years.” Biden with his cabinet of war mongers had decided that he is the world’s foremost expert on foreign policy and that arming Nazis for a proxy war in Ukraine was a great choice. After all, no one knows better than Genocide Joe, even the great Henry Kissinger!
People like Joe Biden and Henry Kissinger are products of the capitalist system, just as were their predecessors Margaret Thatcher, Benito Mussolini, Queen Victoria, and Andrew Jackson. For people educated in the United States, it is difficult to break free from the “Great Man” theory of history. This theory has been shoved down our throats from the start of our education with myths about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers. Villanova University describes the Great Man Theory of history in the following manner:
The Great Man Theory of Leadership espouses that great leaders are born, not made. These individuals come into the world possessing certain characteristics and traits not found in all people. These abilities enable them to lead while shaping the very pages of history. Under great man theory, prominent leaders throughout the course of history were born to lead and deserved to do so as a result of their natural abilities and talents.
It is not a coincidence that this theory was formed in the 19th century under the patriarchal system of capitalism. There is no Great Woman theory of history. The Great Man theory also completely dismisses the power of the masses and class struggle. The great man Karl Marx tore apart the Great Man theory with his discovery of historical materialism. In The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, he wrote:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.
In the age of neoliberalism, we can see Secretary of State Antony Blinken conjuring up the ghost of Kissinger’s past. As described by Seymour Hersh and reported by Rolling Stone, during Vietnam, H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, described Kissinger as being the “hawk of hawks” inside the White House but “touching glasses at a party with his liberal friends, the belligerent Kissinger would suddenly become a dove.” Antony Blinken fulfills the same role today. Recently, Blinken claimed that he has “urged Israel to take every possible measure to avoid civilian harm.” He also said, “So first, on the civilian protection and humanitarian assistance piece of this, as I said, that is absolutely imperative. And we saw Israel take steps immediately today to start to get information to people about where safe areas are, how they can get out of harm’s way.” Meanwhile, in the real world, Israel had resumed bombing civilians in Gaza with no regard for innocent life with over 175 civilians killed and 589 injured on December 1. According to Al Jazeera, “Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) says northern Gaza’s al-Awda Hospital, where its staff works, came under attack and was damaged hours after the truce ended.” Blinken’s state department is the hawk of hawks as they enable this genocide to continue.
These attacks are being carried out with the direct assistance of the Biden regime. On November 25, the Intercept reported that President Biden “requested the removal of restrictions on all categories of weapons and ammunition Israel is allowed to access from U.S. weapons stockpiles stored in Israel itself.” The US has supplied Israel in the past with white phosphorus ammunition (banned internationally for use in urban areas) which has been used in Lebanon and Gaza in the latest stage of the genocide. And now, Biden is arming Israel with 2,000 lbs bunker buster bombs to be used against civilians in Gaza. The continued shipment of weapons to Israel, a state known for their gross violations of human rights is in violation of the Leahy Law. This law prohibits “the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.” The arming of the Azov and other Nazi battalions in Ukraine was also a violation of the Leahy Law. Blinken talks of an international rules based order, but can’t even adhere to domestic laws against arming terrorists.
There are differences between each presidential regime and individual Secretaries of State, however, overall they all serve one purpose - upholding the United States empire. In the late 19th century, the United States shifted from a settler-colonial state built on genocide to a thoroughly capitalist imperial state. While still maintaining apartheid and genodical conditions at home, the US shifted its focus to the global stage. As Lenin described in Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism:
If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has been completely divided up.
This was part of a change in the capitalist system that Marx and Engels had predicted in the Communist Manifesto:
All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.
Ever since the arrival of the United States on the world stage as an imperial power, the ruling class of the United States has served in defense of their imperial interests. As the Communist Manifesto explained, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” John Foster Dulles, David Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Michael Pompeo, Antony Blinken and all the rest of the former Secretaries of State have simply been acting in the interests of the bourgeoisie as a class. Their war crimes are the war crimes of the capitalist class.
While the face of the regime changes with each election, the imperialist system remains the same. Until the capitalist system is overthrown, US foreign policy will exist to serve empire and the interests of the ruling class. Henry Kissinger’s crimes stand out as particularly depraved which is why the ruling class have come together to praise him.
"I had the opportunity to personally communicate with this deep, extraordinary man many times, and I will undoubtedly retain the fondest memory of him." - Vladimir Putin
"The Chinese people never forget their old friends, and Sino-U.S. relations will always be linked with the name of Henry Kissinger." - Xi Jinping
Henry Kissinger was a giant of history. His century of ideas and diplomacy had a long-standing influence on his time and on our world. France addresses its condolences to the American people. - Emmanuel Macron
I was very privileged to get his counsel many times including as recently as about a month ago. He was extraordinarily generous with his wisdom and his advice. Few people were better students of history. Even fewer people did more to shape history. - Antony Blinken
Henry Kissinger was not just a diplomat; he was a thinker who believed in the power of ideas and the importance of intellectual capital in public life. His contributions to the field of international relations and his efforts in navigating some of the most challenging diplomatic terrains are a testament to his extraordinary capabilities. - Benjamin Netanyahu
Here is Henry Kissinger displaying these extraordinary capabilities on a call with Russian pranksters pretending to be Zelensky:
What a vast intellect, what an extraordinary man, sanctioning state terrorism to his very last breath. The world is better off without him, but the system that created this monster still remains. The spectre of Henry Kissinger and his war crimes live on today in the form of Antony Blinken, Joe Biden, Volodymyr Zelensky, Isaac Herzog, and Benjamin Netanyahu. All these faithful servants of empire do not hesitate when it comes to murdering children to advance the interests of capital.
Jewish messianism has been spreading its poisonous message among us for nearly two thousand years. Democratic and communist universalisms are more recent, but they have only strengthened the old Jewish narrative. These are the same ideals . . .
The transnational, transracial, transcultural, transexual ideals that these ideologies preach to us (beyond peoples, races, cultures) and are the daily sustenance of our schools, in our media, in our pop culture, at our universities and on our streets, have reduced our biosymbolic identity and ethnic pride to their minimal expression.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are death cults that originated in the Middle East and are completely alien to Europe and its peoples.
Sometimes one wonders why the European left gets along so well with Muslims. Why does an often openly anti-religious movement side with a fierce religiosity that seems to oppose almost everything the left always claims to stand for? Part of the explanation lies in the fact that Islam and Marxism share a common ideological root: Judaism.
Don Rumsfeld was right to say, 'Europe has shifted on its axis', the wrong side won World War II, and it is becoming clearer by the day . . . What has NATO done to defend Europe? Absolutely nothing.
My enemies are not in Moscow, Damascus, Tehran, Riyadh or some ethereal Germanic bogeyman, but in Washington, Brussels and Tel Aviv.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/pardonne-mon-francais-va-te-faire