Henry Kissinger and the peace the world cannot give

National Post, 28 May 2023

It would be strange if a man so deeply immersed the messiness of history did not wonder about the deepest meaning of it all

The Kissinger Century has occasioned Kissinger Week, where every major English-speaking title in journalism has marked Henry Kissinger’s 100th birthday this Saturday.

The statesman is also a showman, and he took centre stage with an eight-hour interview with The Economist, resulting in it publishing a 20,000 word transcript. Who gives eight hour interviews? Who has that much to say, worthy of printing in a leading title?

Perhaps Kissinger did it as a rebuke to the sorry state of America’s leadership class, where the current president would find it difficult to work eight consecutive hours in a day, and his predecessor has likely never devoted eight hours to reading any book.

In The Economist interview, Kissinger suggests that the world has now returned to a pre-First World War moment, with competing alliances threatening expanding wars. The world was in its pre-Great War phase in 1913, only ten years before Kissinger was born. Richard Nixon was born that year, died in his 80s and has been dead nearly 20 years. That’s how far back Kissinger goes, born before both the late Queen Elizabeth II and the late Pope Benedict XVI.

Thus the assessment of Kissinger becomes something of an assessment of the American century, lights and shadows. Others have dealt with that in depth on his centenary; I simply relate some of his observations about faith in the worldview of foreign policy realism.

I first spoke with him in 2007 at a Vatican conference, where he delivered a Kissingerian tour d’horizon to a group of social science scholars. At one point I was startled to find him beside me at a coffee break and he asked me what I thought of Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Address of the previous year. It had caused an enormous uproar in the Islamic world as the Holy Father explored the theological roots of religious violence. I would learn later from people who actually knew Kissinger that he regularly did that — ask total strangers for their views.

My stumbling answer mostly consisted of asking what he thought. I expected the architect of realpolitik to chastise a meddling professorial pontiff for not knowing the real world consequences of his musings.

Instead, Kissinger pronounced it the most important speech since 9/11, as religious violence could not be overcome only by the tools of diplomatic and military strategy. A change in culture and values required a religious response and a theological critique; Benedict was courageous enough to offer one.

Kissinger saw how Pope John Paul II — for whom he had great admiration — wielded moral power against the Soviet empire. Perhaps bearing moral witness to theological truths might also be effective in the challenge of violent jihadism.

My only extended visit with Dr. Kissinger was last December to discuss his recent book Leadership. We spoke for forty-five minutes. His views on the importance of moral witness remain unchanged, and he stressed that churches should offer it.

“The world does not need another leftist NGO,” he commented about the tendency of churches to trade moral theology for social activism.

About the six leaders he profiled in Leadership — Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Lee Kuan Yew, Anwar Sadat and Margaret Thatcher — he noted that they all possessed a transcendent vision, another acknowledgement that ideals, not only interests, shape strategic history. For five of the six (Lee excepted), he thought that personal religious faith was a key contributor to their capacity to lead peoples toward goals not yet visible, on the other side of the horizon. Certainly it was true of Adenauer, who faced the deepest challenges of any of them, restoring Germany to the family of nations.

As for Kissinger’s own religious faith, there is the famous exchange with Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir. Kissinger told her that he was “an American first, Secretary of State second, and a Jew third.”

Meir replied, “In Israel, we read from right to left.”

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