Henry Kissinger and the Great Man of History Nonsense

 Henry Kissinger finally died at 100.  As expected, a veritable deluge of fawning accolades and breathless wonder at his role in world affairs ensued.  And the sycophancy didn’t stop there.  His celebrity status and long career among the world glitterati was portrayed in depth, including some efforts to paint him as a bit of a Casanova, which beggars belief, but as he once said – power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

As a pleasant surprise, the media onslaught also included numerous pieces assailing his legacy and castigating him for his role in some of the most horrific events of the late twentieth century, including the politically-motivated delays in ending the Vietnam War, the Cambodian genocide, the Pakistan/Bangladesh genocide, the crimes of Pinochet’s Chile and a host of other historical mass murders.

 

I am not an expert on Kissinger, nor do I wish to be.  But his life seems to me a perfect example of the way that power and celebrity status are acquired and how we rush to admire and marvel at those who wield great influence in our world, extolling in rapturous praise the few salutary things they accomplish while excusing or simply not mentioning the hideous results of many of their decisions or actions.

 

And the irony of it all is that the good things they were involved in would probably have occurred regardless of who was in that position because of the historical forces at play, whereas often the horrible things would not have happened if they had not intervened and manipulated events in such an arrogant manner.

 

Take Kissinger’s most revered diplomatic triumphs – the opening of China and the subsequent isolation of the Soviet Union.  Was that really a brilliant strategic move on Kissinger’s part or simply an historic inevitability that occurred because all of the right pieces were in place and Kissinger was simply the only one in a position to move everything forward?

 

Key figures of powerful nations fall in love with the superman personas that they acquire once in their positions.  They become intoxicated in the rarified air of grand strategies and the Great Game, as the British called their battle for world domination with the Russian Empire in the 19^th century.  They forget that they are really silly little men who by various quirks of fate have been given far too much power.  And by wielding that power in capricious and arrogant ways, they often cause much more death and destruction and long-term consequences than they have the capacity to comprehend.

 

I will take Robert McNamara over Henry Kissinger a hundred times.  At least he had the moral strength and humility to question his actions and acknowledge his mistakes.  His career was also an example of ‘Great Game’ hubris, but his intellectual honesty eventually forced him to reckon with the consequences of his tenure as Secretary of Defense and apologize.  He faced great scorn for this honesty.  I applaud him.

 

The Great Man Theory was proposed in the 19^th century as a way to explain the history of the world in terms of the acts of so-called great man.  The theory’s postulate is that the world moves forward due to these great men and that the rest of us are more or less meaningless pawns with only a supporting role (perhaps a slight over-simplification . . . ) .  At the time, Napoleon was a popular example of the Great Man.  Leo Tolstoy did a rather thorough job of debunking the myth of that particular great man in his novel War and Peace, but the general idolization of famous men continued and seems to grow more fervid with each new generation.

 

Our fascination with fame and power has been heightened by the ubiquity of modern Internet media focusing on celebrities.  It reaches a rather telling level of absurdity with the public adoration of British royalty.  Here are people whose only claim to fame is having been born into the royal family – a purely genetic lottery win - yet we gush and fawn over them shamelessly.  

 

Celebrity breeds more celebrity, and power more power.   It seems that there is a critical mass of renown that, once reached, becomes a launching pad for endless new endeavors and positions of influence.  The famous and powerful form a spirited club of mutual admiration that results in them showering opportunities, awards, power and wealth on one another in waves of self-promoting largesse and quid pro quo.

 

Kissinger was reported by some to be the life of every party and a ‘brilliant conversationalist’, though I have read more than a few contemporaries describe him as a colossal bore who would never shut up.  People are so enchanted and beguiled by anyone who has even the slightest fame or power.  They laugh heartily at every attempted clever remark, nod in over-awed agreement at every stated opinion and generally revel in being in the company of such a potentate.

 

For some reason, human beings want badly to believe that there is something special about the people that populate the halls of power and have dominion over so many lives and events.  After a lifetime of observation, I do believe they are endowed with one spectacular attribute: vanity.