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00:00 And for more, we can cross to Austin, Texas.
00:03 He's professor of history at the University of Texas.
00:05 Jeremy Suri, the author of Henry Kissinger and the American Century.
00:09 Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.
00:12 My pleasure.
00:13 Thank you.
00:14 Of course, a one minute 39 report does not do justice to the life of Henry Kissinger.
00:19 Just one reaction, though, when you heard that spokesperson for the Chinese foreign
00:23 ministry there, what were you thinking?
00:25 Well, the Chinese government has always believed that Kissinger represented exactly the kind
00:31 of envoy they wanted from the United States.
00:35 Someone who did not care a lot about human rights, valued the relationship with the U.S.,
00:39 valued stability and also respected Chinese power.
00:43 So it was a very predictable comment.
00:46 It was more about Chinese hopes than it was about Henry Kissinger.
00:50 He was a cold warrior.
00:54 Was he someone, though, of the past or was he still relevant in today's world at a time
01:00 when you have these old superpower rivalries that are inflamed?
01:06 Well, he was a man of the past in that he was a product of World War II, a product of
01:12 the Holocaust and a belief that the United States was one of the few powers in the world,
01:17 along with France and China and Russia, that could manage international conflict.
01:22 And that's a very traditional way of thinking, a very great power way of thinking.
01:27 It doesn't reflect the diffusion of power in a world post-empire, in a world with new
01:32 economics and new technologies.
01:34 At the same time, though, he was a very modern figure in that he understood the challenges
01:38 of managing powerful, difficult weapons and the importance of building what he called
01:44 international rules, rules that would govern the international space so it would not become
01:49 too chaotic.
01:50 And so we would not have a descent into exactly the kinds of wars we're seeing in so many
01:54 regions now.
01:56 So he had his traditional elements and he had his very modern elements as well.
01:59 A German Jew who flees from Nazi Germany at the age of 15, grows up in a, what, a crowded
02:06 Bronx apartment, and then he goes back working for the U.S. military intelligence as an interpreter.
02:15 How did that shape his view of the world?
02:18 Well, this is something I've spent a lot of time writing about.
02:21 It provided a particular framework that he brought to everything he did thereafter.
02:27 He believed that the problem in Germany was not too little democracy.
02:32 The problem was too little leadership.
02:34 He believed that democracies needed strong leaders.
02:37 This is why he revered someone like Charles de Gaulle.
02:39 He believed that de Gaulle was the model that you needed in a society, a leader who would
02:44 hold things together, a leader who he said could see the future before the people in
02:49 that society could.
02:50 He believed that force had to be used to enforce rules, to prevent excess violence, and to
02:57 control societies.
02:59 At the same time, he believed in democracy, but I would call it a controlled democracy.
03:04 Many Holocaust survivors had the same reactions to the experience of Weimar Germany that he
03:09 brought to his thinking about policy thereafter.
03:13 He's one of the architects, you could say, or one of the players in the signing of the
03:17 Paris Treaty, which ends the Vietnam War.
03:20 I remember at my college campus, professors who didn't speak to each other since the day
03:25 Kissinger advised the president to bomb Cambodia.
03:29 Which side of the fence will history remember him on?
03:34 I think the experience in Vietnam, and particularly the bombing of Cambodia, is one of the many
03:38 dark parts of his record.
03:40 He has a very mixed record.
03:41 The opening to China that we've talked about, the negotiations in the Middle East, those
03:44 have very positive implications.
03:46 But the lying, the bombing, the rampant destruction in Vietnam and Cambodia, the coups in Chile,
03:53 these are very hard to justify in retrospect.
03:56 And I will also say that the ways in which he and President Nixon lied to the American
04:01 public, claiming we were not bombing Cambodia when in fact our country was, that contributed
04:06 to a lot of the distrust in government that we see, particularly in the United States
04:10 today.
04:11 Chile's president retweeting his ambassador to the United States who wrote, quote, "A
04:16 man has died whose historical brilliance never managed to conceal his profound moral misery."
04:22 Moral misery?
04:25 Well I talk about this in some of my writing.
04:27 I spent time with Kissinger and I do think he was morally troubled.
04:32 He recognized, he was smart enough to recognize that many of the policies he pursued did not
04:37 result in the kinds of outcomes he wanted.
04:40 He did not want to see a repressive regime in Chile, but his actions led to that.
04:45 So I do think there's something there, and this is why for all of his writing, Kissinger
04:50 says very little about morality.
04:52 That said, I respect and admire for all of his flaws that this was a person who really
04:57 tried to use power to get things done in the world for what he thought was a safer, more
05:02 secure place, at least for American interests as he defined them.
05:06 We live in a world today where governments are incapable or seem incapable of getting
05:10 things done.
05:11 He gives us a model of at least trying to use power to make a difference in the world.
05:16 He lives to be 100, and it's also, and perhaps you can tell us what it was like sitting down
05:22 with him, do you might say to a huge intellectual curiosity.
05:27 Seem to always be asking questions of the people interviewing him.
05:31 Well what struck me in my time with Dr. Kissinger was just what you said, his curiosity.
05:37 Also I have to say his obsession with power.
05:40 Coming of age during the Holocaust, seeing his family lose everything, his grandparents,
05:45 his maternal grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, coming to the United States as
05:48 a refugee with nothing.
05:49 He was always fearful of what would happen to him and to Jews and to others if they didn't
05:55 have power.
05:56 And so power was never sufficient for him.
05:58 He could never really retire.
06:00 He never retired.
06:01 He was still working incredibly hard.
06:04 And that obsession with power, that drive, that ambition that was with him through the
06:08 last months of his life, I think that's part of what kept him alive.
06:12 But it's also what made it hard for him to reconcile to his own mistakes.
06:17 And when it comes to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when it comes to what's happening
06:21 right now in the Middle East, what would a younger Kissinger have done?
06:28 Well I think a younger Kissinger would have been very involved right now, to some extent
06:33 in the way that Secretary of State Blinken has been, in trying to mediate between Israel
06:39 and its neighbors and trying to bring not just a pause to the fighting, but some political
06:44 solution.
06:45 I think a younger Kissinger would try creative, innovative ways, maybe even involving a Palestinian
06:51 state to try to deal with this impasse that we all recognize is not going to be solved
06:56 by one side bombing the other side into oblivion.
06:58 I think he would be more involved in that.
07:00 And I think in Ukraine he would be advocating for a strong NATO response to Russia, but
07:06 he would be very active trying to negotiate again some agreement with Putin.
07:10 And perhaps that would involve the secession of some land from Ukraine to Russia.
07:15 That would be a Kissinger kind of deal.
07:18 It's been more than three decades since the end of the Cold War.
07:21 Let me ask you this.
07:22 Mr. Nisouri, your students, when they look at Henry Kissinger, is it like in the old
07:27 days where if you were left wing you thought one way and if you were right wing you thought
07:31 another way?
07:32 No.
07:34 It's very different with my students now.
07:36 I spend a lot of time talking to them about figures like Henry Kissinger, Charles de Gaulle,
07:40 and others.
07:41 First of all, the stakes are much lower now.
07:43 These figures seem distant to them.
07:46 They find it hard to believe, actually, that a figure like Kissinger could make a difference
07:50 in the world, for better and for ill, in the way he did.
07:53 They're very cynical about the role of leaders in the world today.
07:58 And what they remember most of Henry Kissinger, I think, are the human rights violations,
08:02 the war crimes, accusations.
08:04 I think for a young generation he's not a hero.
08:07 He's an old wise man, a flawed old wise man.
08:10 Jeremy Suri, many thanks for speaking with us from Austin, Texas.
08:15 My pleasure.
08:16 Thank you for having me.
08:17 Stay with us.
08:18 There's much more to come here on France 24.
08:19 More news, plus today's business and sports.
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