In 1981, I completed a hundred page thesis on Henry Kissinger for my graduation from undergrad from Oral Roberts University.
The topic of this thesis was the underlying metaphysical world view, if any, of one of the most important political figures in our times, Henry Kissinger.
This was completed at a time when Henry Kissinger was still very much, as he remains today, an active participant in our national life and even more so, in the affairs of Washington policy makers.
Instead of focusing on simply his statemanship or his geopolitics and concept of making the then rather cold war era, a global "equilibruim" for the three existing super powers as a 'real politik' answer to the then seemingly endless cold war era with all of its irony and potential for human destruction, Oral Roberts University graduate Richard Olivito's approach was to attempt to 'look beneath' the statecraft of this egnimatic secretary of state and key republican administration foreign policy architect and advisor and attempt to both discover and try to understand the implications of Henry Kissinger's own personal world view and how his own views on metaphysics played a role within his rather now somewhat quaint, if almost sentimental but highly influential foreign policy directives within his/our national foreign policy.
HK's often quoted favorite era was the 19th Century european system political balance of power' era. What was there about this particular system that he so admired? And what if any, did Kissingers own world view about this era enter into his modern day thinking to influence how this nation's foreign policy has been conducted since at least the Nixon administration?
This blog does not wish to fully recreate the world view of Kissinger nor does it completely follow or even detail Richard Olivito's undergraduate thesis [for which his professor, a PHD from Princeton University gave him the highest grade possible], but instead, it attempts to demonstrate how Olivito's understanding of Kissinger even from an earlier era, can today perhaps serve to provide a novel if not critical understanding of one of the leading influences of American foreign policy in the last forty years, but especially during the Nixon White house years and somewhat beyond.
The idea was generally known that Kissinger was not particularly a religious man. He was NOT known to be particularly orthodox, although born a jew and favorable to the notion of a jewish state. He was more aptly self admittedly an agnostic jew, particularly during his formative intellectual younger years. He was not against belief, but he certainly was also, no rabid proponent of any thing even remotely close to today's religious fervor and modern fundamentalism which has so sustained our present republicanism and middle eastern sectarian political and religious strife of the past forty years.
HK came of age during WWII and had been in the army during this period. How much action, if any he actually saw is not well known but it is better understood that he was in the intelligence community and again, influenced by a key mentor from that era, to seek advanced studies in both international studies and related historical/philosophy.
Kissinger was not particularly driven as a jewish individual and intellectual by any hard line view of what today can be described as a Zionistic jew or fundamentalist jewish philosophy in the outward proselytzing sense. This would have hardly passed as politically correct, at Harvard in the fifties and sixties.
Kissinger was also known not to be so committed an idealist so as to allow any democratic principles and/or "higher concepts" get in the way of his approach, personally , to "statecraft" as he liked to refer to foreign policy management and its applied studies.
As our ORU professor himself liked to say about Kissinger, as among higher institutions of eastern ivy leaque schools, Kissinger was viewed as something of an oddity but definitely important and unique character; a very bright individual who was willing to accept the practical and to use the means of power to justify desired ends, so long as it obtained the better goals of "enlightened self interest" and by this and thru this methodology, one could better contain the explosive "events" or "eventualities" of the world; even when necessary, one's most ardent opponents, who often times share such serious idealogical sentiments and world views,
Kissinger's applied foreign policy craft, included, where necessary, the means of creating a system that was tied to power politics, pure and simple, rather than attempting [or tempting] rational higher ends and idealogical goals, such as human rights or as for the communists, world domination thru the march of history.
What Kissinger sort of settled upon was something out of the past; a system of compromised and "equilibrium" of peace brought about not by constantly seeking the most democratic and most shrill of any one nation's idealogy, in any obvious or excessively crude display of national patriotism, but rather he sought only to 'balance' the needs of the major powers in such a way, that allowed for "flexibility" between such super powers in order to prevent them from going to war over ever scarce resources and/or perceived strategic needs.
i.e. think detente....
i.e. think trade openings with china....in the 70's...
and you will see the most clear ideal of the present era super concervative republican party principle, Richard Nixon, looking over the raised wine glasses of his hosts, in meeting with the chief's of the communist state of china...
...and one will have to look not too much further, just to the right and see forever, well into the Wallmartian future, the ever pragmatist broker of that dinner, Henry Kissinger, smiling broadly and openly...behind the throne of any such paradoxical deal. [and, again, NOT IDEAL...but deal]
In fact, what was unique about Kissinger he liked to personalize the actual application of foreign policy concepts and views by studying "the strong men" of existing powers, including
Chairman Mao, Ho Chi Min and then leader of Egypt, Anwar Sadat and while making a study of them based on his own criteria, he built upon these personal observations, a pragmatic program to acheive a better understanding of where such leaders came from, what circumstances they derived within and what interests or ultimate aims or goals they historically sought.
Whether or not one had to openly value these leaders or note what they stood for, one HAD in Kissingers' view, respect where they came from and how they came to power.
Clearly absent from his study and/or world view, was in fact, any one set or loyalty to ANY one world view; i.e. democracy for Kissinger was the preferred national "policy" and this was because he both came to prominance within and also was used to American interests and america's political system.
He gave lip service to the ideals behind it and often said, it was the best interests of mankind.
Yet, one could read everything he wrote as an academician on his world view and still come away, after all the readings and studies were concluded and obtain a sense that what Kissinger was really after was not so much "making the world safe for democracy" or creating an american foreign policy that was singularly and uniquely based on any one singular priority or set of priorities, such as human rights ...for instance.
What Kissinger truly believed was in the best interests of not only American interests and that of the world, free or not so, was that in an era of nuclear capabilities and world wide potential for destruction from biological or chemical weapons, it was best to completely "tone down" one's higher ideals and simply in a word, as best as humanly and humanely, possible, get along.
No need for bloody revolutions based on utopian thoughts of humanity here. No need to spread democracy where it did not originate or suffice for major sacrifices.
It was a measured realism born from what he stated was his long view of history and the wars of european and former empires. What he said he discovered when he closely reviewed the hi story of the weastern world, was all too often, wars were fought for either simple purposes but often dressed up in clothes of "higher ideals" and/or "impossible demands and expectations" which then in turn, led or inexoribly ran nationalismi head on into equally stubborn leaders or national "higher purposes" or sentiments.
In a word, a world filled with leaders espousing idealogical excesses often led to disastorous results in history and when it did, even though it could inspire individual nations to great acts of self hood and self determination, it often if not more so, left the world in a mess and in a series of extented, low simmering or actual hot "cycle of wars" which in the end, undermined the very regimes and very goverments which fought such "rhetorical and idealogical" wars on such "higher principles" to begin with.
IN this manner, many observers understood Kissinger came to appreciate a particular german statesmen who thru a series of brilliant compromises with very serious friends and enemies, kept europe at peace for over 40 years or more during the 1800's.
This was not easily done and it was a singular achievement Kissinger believed by one who was willing to bascially compromise much of his own nationalistic ideals for the sake of maintaining what was called even then, "equilibrium"
This is a tempting model and a very pragmatic, if not wholly "realistic" approach to foreign policy.
It has often been refashioned, dressed up and redistributed. It was NOT necessarily what would pass today for neo con in the present sense. [that today's W's former policy creators, such as Rumsfield, Cheney, Libby and others "sold" to america, that there needs to be an "evil axis" that is to be identified and "rooted out" as a matter of our highest national purpose., making what passes today for american patriotism on par with any old run of the historical mill, jingoism]
In this sense, Kissinger could be viewed as NOT strictly philosophically supportive of what can be said of today's "terror fever" among our present presidential administration's "idealogically driven" national republican leaders.
Its hard to say, however, in a true Kissinger's world view, how much he would disagree with Bush and Cheney and Libby and his Wolfowitzian disciples.
Its not so much his foreign policy writings and statements but his world view, that Kissinger in fact, could be viewed as not having that much out of sync with what has happened under W.
In one sense, many could argue that he would say, that this is the very most dangerous kind of senior American foreign policy that any president could ever have engaged in; i.e. if idealogy as a "super idealogy" took precedent over "strategic planning" and the need for "balance in the system" and simply, pragmatic realism among world leaders, bush's neo con's not only failed their most senior mentor and lost sight of his most singularly critical "categorical imperative" [as HK liked to refer to his central tenets as, after his favorite pure philosopher...Immanual Kant]... but they also simply forgot what he so often blamed other major nations and historical figures, great and small for, ...
...when they did the exact same thing at moments in key pivotal historical contexts and settings, thereby NOT making their worlds any safer or more business or citizen friendly, but rather much more dangerious, much more explosive and utlimately prone to not only isolated wars, but serious, generational multiple national wars.
Kissinger's 'statecraft' in this sense, can be said to actually have to rise up and condemn the excesses of the idealogy of the present day adventurism of Bush W's neo con policy.
But why then hasn't he? Where are the voices of "rational equibrium and realism" today, on the right? Where were they six years ago in W's march to war in Iraq?
Why did it happen in this particular republican president's tenure, that caution was thrown to the wind, and unilaterilism overcome the "Metternichian strain" towards the center, with all of its potential for appeasing the monsters of today's modern historical forces as opposed to the sublime 18th Century balance of european powers?
Where did all of Kissinger's disciples go so wrong?
Perhaps, it has more to do with how Kissinger believed and so viewed the world, then what he ever stated, for decades as both a student of foreign policy or as when a secretary state as much as what he did when he has the opportunity to influence power and powerful men and women.
It is his particular belief system that perhaps, got his followers, and perhaps, even all the world today, into such a mess and quagmire that it will require extreme brilliance, if not a foreign policy miracle, to extract america from this current downward spiral and yet be able to retain its standing of any respect around the world.
Richard Olivito studied Kissinger over 25 years ago as senior in college and has because of this early intense study of this jewish american foreign policy and institutional leader, followed at times, his statements, appearances and forays into the limelight again and again with more than a mere passing interest.
The fact we are living in an era, that was even somewhat strongly influenced by this singular academic agnostic with sentimental but guarded hopes for the world, is enough to make one want to know more about what made his views so much a matter of interest to those on the right in Washington and elsewhere around the globe, so to attempt to remold their views of American foreign policy around his.
What is sometimes amazing about such studies and achieving some keen insights into such men and their world views, even when a quarter of century old, is how still relevant and clear [and sadly, in this writer's opinion] such one man's ideas and/or lack of committed ideals are
still so relevant to our present extremely tense world situation.
Did Kissinger's attempt to manipulate world events and powers into a "detente" of world super power relations, back fire? Did it do this, at least for the United States, one of his super pawns in the world chess game of who's on first?
Are the bizarre events of today's present, only but the significant outcroppings and results deriving from the very "historical context" that Kissinger, Nixon and all those who followed him and his influential ideas on the right, both inside and outside of their hight offices
and corridors of power, in D.C created and sought to put into play many decades ago now?
Did they mistake the need for a foreign policy which was loosed from the moral and philosophical moorings of a sturdy american "higher law" or "idealogy", with the intended idea of creating a 'brokered world peace" among concentrated nations of powerful spheres of influence with their own blindness of the basic human need and central spiritual required core of belief in something more than materialistic understanding of man and the ordering of national strategic governmental or world leaders' interests?
In short, did Kissinger and his disciples and heavy republican political leaders sacrifice too much of this nation's soul when he decided to "demythologize" and "drain the ideology" from America's foreign policy and its stated goals...admist their next twenty five years of power luncheons and shuttle diplomacy? What did they miss and what did they ignore in their reach for a world equilibrium to so miss the present imperative of this Arab "fundamentalist revolution", if indeed, this is the only serious issue, as the primary foreign policy issue of our time
These are but some of the questions, richard olivito intends to explore in this blog and invites any out there to weigh in on the same question.
No question or inquiry or statement is a wrong one here...just as no world leader, no matter how many people he mass murdered was NOT worth discussing, meeting and having lunch with, is true "kissingerinerian".
In the spirit of such 'restraint' and "objectivity" we find ourselves herein, seeking to find some answers to our modern uniquely american predicament in the present world order. Lets see if together we can find some of our own, by studing and discussing someone who not only inspired Olivito over two decades ago, to write a very long and long suffering undergrad thesis, during a critical time of his life, but one who has brought much controversy to the world, even our present world of foreign policy and its "applied science", of diplomacy inside our nation's present posture in the world.
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