Who really was Henry Kissinger (according to American newspapers)
The United States is divided in its opinion of Henry Kissinger, an influential diplomat who died at the age of one hundred. Here are the portraits of the American press
Was it true glory? Exactly as in the rest of the world, even in America the media have provided a chiaroscuro portrait, full of anecdotes but also chilling details, of Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor who died at the age of one hundred years . Here is the memory, peppered with some famous episodes and phrases, which made it some of the main US newspapers.
America divided over Kissinger
One, none and one hundred thousand. Yesterday the media around the world were fatally divided in commemorating the passing of Henry Kissinger: if there were those who saluted the statesman and the Metternich of the short century, there was no shortage of those who even said they were satisfied with the belated release of scene of an alleged war criminal and perpetrator of the most atrocious misdeeds of the stars and stripes superpower.
Even US media outlets have often offered a dichotomous representation, attempting to insert the most controversial policies of the former Secretary of State within a narrative frame in which the achievements achieved by his sagacious diplomacy also emerged.
The New York Times portrait
The New York Times opens its profile by recalling that Kissinger "used cunning, ambition and ingenuity to regenerate America's power relations at the height of the Cold War."
“Considered the most powerful Secretary of State in the post-World War II era,” writes America's most famous newspaper, “he was hailed as an ultra-realist who reshaped diplomacy to reflect American interests, but also denounced for having abandoned American values, particularly in the field of human rights, if it would serve the nation's interests."
The New York Times also emphasizes an unmistakable trait of a man whose “enduring Bavarian accent added an indecipherable element to statements” through which he “transformed nearly every global relationship he touched.”
The man who first built a bridge with communist China, continues the NYT, Kissinger was also "the only American to deal with every Chinese leader from Mao to Xi Jinping", last met in July in Beijing "where he was treated like visiting royalty.”
Kissinger represents the eponymous hero of that realist approach to international relations which never made him lose sight of the key object, namely that competition between great powers which he interpreted, according to the newspaper, "with a crude Machiavellianism, especially when it came to of small nations that he often considered as pawns in the greater battle."
Probably the cruelest act attributed to him was the indiscriminate bombing in Cambodia, where Kissinger, the NYT recalls, ordered the army to hit "everything that moved". Certainly illuminating from this point of view is a phrase attributed to him: "we do illegal things immediately, unconstitutional things take a little more time".
His aura was such, the newspaper continues, that every Republican president sought his approval, while all the presidential candidates of that same party aspired to his endorsement, including Donald Trump who visited him during the 2016 election campaign in the hope of lending gravitas to his political proposal.
The one who kept away from it, however, was Barack Obama who, towards the end of his second mandate, as the Big Apple newspaper still recalls, said that he had spent much of his time in the White House trying to repair the damage done half a century earlier by Kissinger, how to “remove bombs that are still massacring the legs of small children.”
The memory of Fox News
For the conservative and Trumpian broadcaster , Kissinger was simply a man "who left his mark on US foreign policy in the decades to come".
In recalling that he was "praised by his supporters as a brilliant strategist", Fox News is also forced to point out that "he was condemned by his critics as a master of manipulation". Journalist Seymour Hersh, for example, wrote in 2002 that “the dark side of Henry Kissinger is very, very dark.”
Some of his statements recalled by Fox News have remained famous, including the oft-quoted “power is the best aphrodisiac” or the one attributed to him by the New York Times in 1969: “there can't be a crisis next week. My diary is already full."
What NPR writes
In a media landscape like the US dominated by private ownership, the public broadcaster NPR stands out, according to which Kissinger was "one of the most important foreign policy thinkers for over half a century".
His greatest achievement, according to the radio, was "playing a decisive behind-the-scenes role in building the architecture that led to more manageable relations with the Soviet Union, China and the major Arab nations." But this does not change the fact that his name "was closely associated with some of the most controversial US foreign policy moves in recent decades".
Such is the legacy of a man, NPR continues, "whose guiding principle was that US national interests took precedence over more idealistic goals such as the promotion of democracy and human rights." Emblematic in this regard was what he said in a 2007 interview: “I used to tell my colleagues that we are a country, not a foundation. We must conduct foreign policy for America.”
But Kissinger was also, NPR continues, an admired and courted "global celebrity". The testimony of David Rothkopf, director of the consultancy firm founded by the former Secretary of State, is indicative: “I remember when I walked along the streets of Manhattan with him, and he attracted crowds just like a movie star, or a rock star. Everyone, regardless of what they thought of Henry, wanted to see Henry, wanted to be with Henry."
And it is always NPR that recalls perhaps the most significant episode of a long and intense life. It happened in 1945, when Kissinger, a Jew who had escaped Nazi persecution, was in Germany wearing the uniform of the US army while the latter freed the Jewish prisoners of the Ahlem concentration camp.
Recalling that occasion sixty years later, during the screening of a documentary on that story, in the presence of many survivors, Kissinger said: “There is nothing I am prouder of than to have been one of those who had the honor of liberating the Ahlem concentration camp."
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/hnery-kissinger-ritratto-stati-uniti/ on Fri, 01 Dec 2023 07:12:56 +0000.