51–60 of 673 posts
RIP Mister. You were a great intellectual.
For anyone else who might care I found yesterday a great take on that conflict by Lawrence Freedman.
[1] https://samf.substack.com/p/why-not-losing-is-not-tantamount
At any rate, it's hard to think of anyone who is more responsible for the continued post-war global dominance of the US than Henry Kissinger.
> "The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East is a 2011 book by Andrew Scott Cooper"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oil_Kings
> "The book discusses Henry Kissinger, the 1970s oil embargo, and the Iranian Revolution. Cooper had stated that the story on how the U.S. became dependent on Saudi Arabia and how U.S. reliance on oil began was "Less well known" compared to the general understanding of U.S. reliance on oil."
Henry Kissenger along with his British and Gulf Arab partners seem to have invented the concept of petrodollar recycling which has buoyed up the value of the US dollar since about 1975 or so. Balance of payments was a problem and Kissenger said to the Gulf Arabs, "we'll maintain your medieval system of government and the special priviledges of the House of Saud just so long as you keep investing the bulk of those profits back into the US economy (see Saud investments in Uber, today)."
If you read Machiavelli's "the prince" you'll know everything you need to know about Kissenger. Never had an original idea in his whole life.
Are we sure? I was beginning to wonder if the afterlife was going to be holding out on this one. Poor taste jokes aside - is there anyone else as directly responsible for as much modern day suffering, who has "gotten away with it" more cleanly in the eyes of the public? I've always found the disconnect between history and legacy to be rather... jarring.
I can understand why people despise Kissinger, but he’s a pretty interesting figure on the whole. Not the best diplomat or Secretary of State we’ve had, but certainly a seminal figure in American foreign policy.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-ki... "Henry Kissinger died on Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, his consulting firm said in a statement. The notorious war criminal was 100."
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I can’t remember if it was Kissinger or Nixon that Hunter S. Thompson claimed required screws to affix their pants to their crooked bodies. Whatever the case, it was incisive and memorable prose.
It was Nixon. The joke doesn't apply to Kissinger because he wasn't a crook.
I can understand why people despise Kissinger, but he’s a pretty interesting figure on the whole. Not the best diplomat or Secretary of State we’ve had, but certainly a seminal figure in American foreign policy.