Henry Kissinger: Flawed genius who will be missed more in China than the US

Kissinger acknowledged India's civilisational impulse and remarkable assimilative power while retaining its identity, but he remained in thrall to China

Henry Kissinger, a former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, died at the ripe old age of 100 on November 29, 2023. No one will contest his intellectual brilliance and analytical skills, marrying academic excellence with mastery over practical statecraft. And yet his pretensions to statesmanship could never really camouflage the cynicism and even amoral ruthlessness with which he pursued what he considered to be in the interests of his adopted country. The debris of broken countries and traumatised populations that were left behind when he was through with his wanton play with power did not merit, even in his yesteryears, any sense of regret.

The US opening to China in 1972 was, without doubt, a brilliant move on the geopolitical chessboard, check-mating a surprised Soviet Union but also delivering a shock to US allies and friends alike. It was pursued as a cloak-and-dagger drama that is still the stuff of legend, and Kissinger revelled in its pursuit. 

Uncharacteristically, his sense of realpolitik and hard-headed calculation gave way to deference before China’s Communist leaders, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, whose embrace of brutal violence and ruthlessness far surpassed the American version. In the transcripts of conversations he had with Mao and Zhou, Kissinger appears to be in awe of his interlocutors and, at times, even supplicatory. He was also not above joining his hosts in disparaging India and its leaders. Right till the end of his life, he remained an “old friend” of China, with ready access to the country’s top leaders even if senior US officials were denied an audience. His consistent advocacy of constructive American engagement with China and implicit acknowledgement of the country’s enhanced capabilities and aspirations won him many friends in Beijing. 

In India, Kissinger evoked contrary reactions. He was admired as a strategic thinker and even a Machiavellian practitioner, demonstrating the morally unconstrained wielding of power, which many believe should also be India’s forte as a great power. But there is anger and a sense of betrayal over the role he played during the 1971 Bangladesh War. He was, like his President, Richard Nixon, openly partisan, supporting Pakistan unreservedly and turning a blind eye to its genocide in Bangladesh and the flood of refugees into India. He went to the extent of urging China to engage in military action on the India-China border to relieve the military pressure on Pakistan as the war unfolded. The dispatch of the USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal was meant to intimidate India, but this did not succeed. In later years, he would say that all of that happened at a different time and in different circumstances when US compulsions were unlike what they are today. He became an advocate of closer India-US relations and expressed an understanding of the security challenges, which led India to carry out a series of nuclear tests in May 1998 and declare itself a nuclear weapon state. 

In his book World Order, published in 2014, Kissinger examined the strategic cultures and world views of the major geopolitical actors, including those in Asia. The section on India explores the deep currents of history and culture, including its unique brand of statecraft, which has left its stamp on modern India’s worldview. He considered Nehru’s non-alignment a wise course for an emerging nation and even saw parallels with US policy before the US became a superpower after the Second World War. He recognised India’s enhanced regional and global footprint but also the remarkable consistency in its foreign policy. India’s strategic community would be flattered by his expectation that “India will be a fulcrum of twenty-first-century order: an indispensable element, based on its geography, resources, and tradition of sophisticated leadership, in the strategic and ideological evolution of the region and the concepts of order at whose intersection it stands.”

These words may have served to absolve him to some extent of the deeply offensive language and damaging acts that he heaped on India as Nixon’s hatchet-man-in-chief.

I had the opportunity to meet Kissinger several times over the past couple of decades. I was impressed by his sharpness of mind and the deep historical perspective he brought to bear on any subject under discussion. He had mellowed with age and accumulated layers of wisdom, which he shared with a deliberate and studied air. But he also sought an Indian perspective through gentle probing and respectful attention. Not quite the overbearing and often obstreperous official his biographies bear witness to. He acknowledged India’s civilisational impulse and remarkable assimilative power while retaining its identity, but he remained in thrall to China. I think he will be missed more in China than in the US.

Shyam Saran is a former Foreign Secretary and an Honorary Fellow at CPR