The death of Henry Kissinger has coincided with the (disappointing) impact of Ridley Scott’s film about Napoleon starring Joaquin Phoenix. A strictly random coincidence, but full of significance. The case is this. Napoleon defeated in Leipzig, the European chancelleries met in Vienna to solve the difficulties posed by the reorganization of the borders of Europe, which twenty-five years of Napoleonic wars had turned upside down.
Under the guidance of Great Britain, they jointly legitimized a new order. Many cultural nations suffered oppression. Weak powers like Poland received bravely. Many countries experienced revolutionary outbreaks. But the world order lasted a century.
What does this post-Napoleonic congress have to do with Kissinger? He dedicated his thesis to it. Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium, where he introduced the concept of “legitimacy” for the first time. An international order accepted by all the great powers is “legitimate” while an international order not accepted by one or more of the great powers is “revolutionary” and therefore dangerous.
All of Kissinger’s work responds to the vindication of the Congress of Vienna. The need for an order shared by several powers. That is why he opposed the neocons, “revolutionaries” who, arm in arm with Reagan, overturned the world order in pursuit of a unique American hegemony (fall of the USSR). The US is now experiencing the strange and dramatic fatigue of not being able to leave the world, but not being able to dominate it in its entirety.
The ties that Kissinger forged with China correspond to the Viennese fixation. It was about weakening (not crushing) the USSR while favoring a new power, which would have to adapt to American guidance. Kissinger, however, did not properly evaluate the Chinese potential, which now wants to share the world with the USA, yes, but not submit to its guidance.
Kissinger taught us geopolitics: an analysis that leaves aside values ??and analyzes the world in terms of power and strength. In addition to his devotion to history, there are two of his theoretical contributions. First: nations have an idea (historical, cultural) of themselves and their leaders tend to express it when they make strategic decisions. Second: geopolitical analysis must take into account the points of view of others. He was not talking about empathy, of course, but about knowing well the cultural identity of allies and rivals.
Kissinger is perceived among us as a bloodthirsty bomber of Cambodia. Defender of coup plotters like Pinochet, he is loathed for ignoring human rights wherever it suited Americans. It has been the embodiment of “torment due to the imperfect application of American values ??to the rest of the world” (the phrase is his: Diplomacy).
He was not a saint. Not a demon either. Many international saints have blood on their hands. Geopolitics is not inspired by values, it analyzes the international reality in order to act with strategic intelligence.
All powers act like this. According to Kissinger, it is enough that the elites of each power agree to co-manage the international order. It doesn’t matter what public opinion says; it doesn’t matter what the small nations forced to swallow the hegemony of the powers think. Morality is dismissed as irrelevant. That’s how raw international politics is. Not Kissinger’s, only. The one that all countries practice right now. Even that of the leaders most fond of playing the lyre or the violin.