At long last, the bastard has bit the bucket.

On November 29th, 2023, the architect of American imperialism drew his last miserable breath. Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and prolific and unrepentant war criminal, died at the age of 100.

Kissinger is perhaps best remembered for his tenure as Secretary of State to Richard Nixon. His decisions during his tenure in this position would go on to define American foreign policy and thereafter, and irrevocably change the geopolitical face of the world as we understand it today. His resume might as well have been a list of names inked in blood for all of the deaths in which he trafficked.

That one can scarce speak about any number of the atrocities committed in the latter half of the twentieth century without invoking Kissinger’s name speaks as much to his record as should any testimony to his character or service record.

Kissinger’s disregard for the welfare of the countries ravaged by American empire during the Cold War and his utter dissinterest in the sanctity of human life are underscored by the bitter irony of his family having fled the Third Reich in 1938.

Arguably, the defining characteristic of Kissinger’s approach to foreign policy was virulent anticommunism. Despite his faciliations of détente between the US and the USSR, Kissinger’s policies betrayed a fear of making any concessions to the Eastern Bloc, to the point of him repeatedly extending support to dictatorial regimes in attempts to undercut any political movemnts potentially sympathetic to the Soviets or communism in Asia and the Middle East.

Kissinger began his career as an academic and consultant in the mid 1950s, receiving an MA and a Doctorate in political science from Harvard, and serving as a National Security consultant on nuclear weapons. Throughout his time at Harvard, Kissinger might charitably be described as an “overacheiver.” Conversely, he is perhaps best understood to be an egoist: submitting a self-indulgent and overwrought 400-page paper for his senior undergraduate thesis, and presenting himself as an authority on foreign policy with a self-assuredness bordering on narcissism.

This narcisssism would manifest most infamously in him styling himself as a “cowboy” of American foreign policy in an interview with Italian journalist Oriana Follaci, declaring that he acted alone and cared little for his public perception. Critical coverage of Kissinger at the time painted him as duplicitous and arrogant, often saying one thing in public and another behind closed doors, and making prolific use of epithets and aspersions towards his political enemies.

Kissinger at various points prior to and during the 1971 Bangledesh Liberation War called the wife of the Indian Prime Minister a “bitch,” called Indians “bastards,” and outwardly mocked those expressing sympathy for the Bengali victims of the Gonohotta genocide. 

During the conflict, Nixon and Kissinger threw their weight behind the Pakistani government led by dictator General Yahya Khan. When United States consul General to East Pakistan, Archer K. Blood, informed Kissinger that the American’s Pakistani allies were orchestrating a genocide against the Bengali people, Kissinger’s response was to relieve Blood of his post.

In each of the United States’ anticommunist political incursions in South America over the course of the 1970s, Kissinger is alleged to have played a part. Following the election of Socialist political leader Salvador Allende in Chile, the United States supported Operation Condor: a coup against the political and miltary establishment in Chile which resulted in Allende’s assassination and the instatement of the despotic government of Augusto Pinochet.

Decades after the coup, the Central Intelligence Agency admitted its involvement in the attempted kidnapping cum murder of Rene Schneider, whose family sued Kissinger for his alleged involvement in the Operation. Kissinger offered express support for the military junta during the deposition of Argentinian President Isabel Peron by an insurgent military government who would carry out a decades long campaign of terror—rounding dissidents into internment camps and “dissappearing” their political opponents.

During the American invasion of Vietnam, Kissinger organized much of the American strategy around avoiding anything he saw as capitulation to the Soviet Union. Kissinger cared little as to the fate of South Vietnam and its population, a disregard which arguably enabled the scope of American scorched-Earth deployment of napalm and Agent Orange during the campaign.

As effectively Richard Nixon’s right-hand-man, Kissinger was instrumental in the design of the Cambodian campaign and the implementation of the Operation Menu carpet bombing campaign. The bombing operations devastated swathes of rural Cambodia, and killed an estimated tens of thousands of Cambodian citizens.

During peace talks in Paris with the government of North Vietnam, Kissinger called the Vietnamese “a bunch of … tawdry, filthy shits,” and said that despite the fact of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge government being “murderous thugs,” the US would “[not] let that stand in our way,” allegedly going so far as to offer support to the regime who would go on to orchestrate the Cambodian Genocide.

Said the late Anthony Bourdain of Kissinger’s career:

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”

If nothing else, it is a great shame he was not alive to hear the news.

Kissinger was notoriously clandestine in his operations, frequently witholding information from some or all parties involved in negotiations, often to further his own political interests. During the outbreak of the fourth Arab–Israeli War, Kissinger witheld news of the conflict’s outbreak from President Richard Nixon for 3½ hours in the hope of letting Israeli forces push across the Suez Canal before the President could organize efforts for a ceasefire.

While Kissinger fell out of the inner circle following Richard Nixon’s post-Watergate resignation  and succession by Gerald Ford, he nonetheless retained the charm of much of the American elite. For the rest of his career, Kissinger flitted between private industry consultation roles and think-tank positions, all while being paid millions to postulate on foreign policy decisions. 

In spite of his more closely resembling an ambling corpse in his later years than anything reminiscent of a human being, Kissinger remained outspoken on U.S. foreign policy right till his bitter end. He declared the outbreak of conflict between the state of Israel and Hamas in October 2023 an attempt to “mobilize the Arab world against Israel,” and used it to justify his Islamophobic view of Muslim Immigration into Germany, saying “It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts.”

Were there any justice in this world, Henry Kissinger would have expired long before he ever saw the privilege of wasting away in his own home. To that end, Kissinger’s peaceful death serves ultimately to confer him the last laugh.

While his death is not a victory in itself of any progressive cause, and its celebration should not preclude the necessity of material organizing of the moment, we might all take momentary pause and breathe easier knowing that the world is rid of one of its greatest monsters.

Good riddance after so many years; shame it hadn’t come a bit sooner.