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The enduring power of Henry Kissinger
CBC ^ | 5/27/2013 | Brian Stewart

Posted on 05/27/2013 8:19:20 AM PDT by Borges

It is astonishing to consider the full arc of Henry Kissinger's influence on U.S. and world politics, spanning as it does close to six decades, 11 presidents and four generations' worth of dangerous events.

Indeed, it's hard even to remember a time when Kissingerian insights were not pulled out and debated whenever U.S. foreign policy faced a new round of soul searching.

In fact, Kissinger's strategies are an expanded version of that notion, which, it should be noted, did not prevent Europe's nations from competing to the point they toppled into the First World War.

Even in the distant past of the Eisenhower era, back before U.S. space flights, the Berlin Wall or the Vietnam War, the then Harvard professor was a prominent, often controversial voice in the seminal debates over the strategies for the nuclear age.

So long a public life lived on a global stage inevitably accumulates as many critics as admirers, let alone some infamous setbacks as well as the acclaimed successes.

And yet, having just turned 90, his views are still eagerly sought by diplomats, financiers and media pundits over almost every emerging flashpoint, from Syria and Iran to North Korea.

What accounts for such durability? In part you'd have to say the message; in part, the man.

Today, the Kissinger worldview is often used synonymously with realpolitik, that cold-eyed, unemotional view of statecraft famously practised by the likes of such 19th-century European diplomats as Metternich and Bismarck, and meaning the careful balancing of nations to avoid the domination of the continent by any one power.

(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: henrykissinger; kissinger
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1 posted on 05/27/2013 8:19:20 AM PDT by Borges
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To: Borges

Sick bastards on display. The world is their wrecking ball test zone.


2 posted on 05/27/2013 8:40:04 AM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi)
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To: Borges

Sorry...The last couple of time I listened to him...IMHO...He’s lost it!!


3 posted on 05/27/2013 8:40:52 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Sacajaweau
He's 90 years old. Things happen to your thinking at that age. But Kissinger and Nixon forged possibly the most effective foreign policy the Nation has seen since the days of the Founders. Although Ford and the Congress betrayed our allies in South VietNam, Kissinger had hammered out a potentially viable solution to what was a nearly insoluble problem. The Nixon-Kissinger management of the Cold war was masterful.
4 posted on 05/27/2013 8:46:52 AM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: NormsRevenge

What’s your problem with Kissinger?


5 posted on 05/27/2013 8:54:01 AM PDT by Borges
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To: hinckley buzzard

I have no problem with his Nixon years. But in fact, it was Nixon who was a Foreign Policy master. Kissinger was the bangboard...just as he is now.


6 posted on 05/27/2013 8:54:05 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Sacajaweau
He’s lost it!!

Note that Hillary Clinton, who is ~30 years less experienced has had many serious memory lapses for years.

Ms Clinton has left no fingerprints anywhere, ever.

Henry K, like him or not, has left a wide trail.

Including holding a document up to the chandelier in Moscow and asking for ten copies.

7 posted on 05/27/2013 9:00:07 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT (The best is the enemy of the good!)
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To: Borges

one worlder for starters. that enough..


8 posted on 05/27/2013 9:04:54 AM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi)
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To: Borges

The mechanism of Government of the masses is a necessary ‘evil’, if you will.

When we allow the loosening the ofleashes that bind that ‘evil’ to some controls for our own sake, we trust others to do the right or lawful thing when called to do so..

Sadly I am of the belief that very few past or present politicians are capable of rising above petty politics, global rule and rein in the ‘evil’ that resides in far too many in leadership roles.

Such is our mortal dilemna.. and moral one as well.

I am no respector of him then, now or in the history books that will praise his ‘successes’.. and suffer to mention the costs paid being left out. jmo ;-]


9 posted on 05/27/2013 9:10:57 AM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi)
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To: NormsRevenge

I had to read one of his books in a European Politics class. Very Statist Globalist ....very long winded and self-aggrandizing. Not sure if his book was on Metternich or Kissinger himself.

I think people just remember his diplomacy stints with Nixon...and not what he really stood for.

He was definitely One Wonder....and you and me weren’t going to be part of it


10 posted on 05/27/2013 9:20:17 AM PDT by SeminoleCounty (GOP - Greenlighting Obama's Programs)
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To: NormsRevenge

Working for the Bilderbergers for 6 decades.


11 posted on 05/27/2013 9:20:58 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped.)
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To: Borges

I was sure no supporter of Kissinger.


12 posted on 05/27/2013 9:28:01 AM PDT by ansel12 (Social liberalism/libertarianism, empowers, creates and imports, and breeds, economic liberals.)
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To: DUMBGRUNT
Foreign affairs was not in Hillary's resume. But it got her out of the country, away from Bill....and the world is so screwed up....What does it matter now??

It will take decades to straighten out the Obama mess....of changing regimes for worse regimes. Gaddahfi should have NEVER been taken out. And Egypt is now our enemy. What a mess.

13 posted on 05/27/2013 9:29:55 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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14 posted on 05/27/2013 9:55:55 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Romney would have been worse, if you're a dumb ass.)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks Borges.
...the Kissinger worldview is often used synonymously with realpolitik, that cold-eyed, unemotional view of statecraft famously practised by the likes of such 19th-century European diplomats as Metternich and Bismarck, and meaning the careful balancing of nations to avoid the domination of the continent by any one power.

15 posted on 05/27/2013 9:56:18 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Romney would have been worse, if you're a dumb ass.)
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To: Borges

New world order consigliere.

The whole outfit needs to be rolled up and tried for war crimes in military tribunals.

Up until a short time ago I was blissfully ignorant and had the opposite view.

Now I only know the barest of essentials about world power structures (which date back to the Medici’s, etc.).

Just from that small bit of information, the truth is painfully obvious.

Everyone needs to do their own research on this.

Because it is the real “enemy” the free world faces in the immediate sense. If nwo is not put out of business, NOTHING is going to change, since they control the important power positions of society.

They only control a tiny fraction of society, i.e., 0.0001%, or some such very small number. But those members of nwo are in the most powerful positions of the most powerful aspects of society.

NWO profits and achieves objectives from war and terror, so they instigate same from both sides and manage the resulting conflicts.

One important class of evidence is the large scale illegal drug operations. If one looks back to the Opium Wars and surrounding history, one finds the financial predecessors of today’s elite banking circles and world financial and political power structures managing another two-sided conflict.

Diplomat extraordinaire ? No, minion of financial oligarchs.


16 posted on 05/27/2013 10:18:47 AM PDT by PieterCasparzen (We have to fix things ourselves)
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To: wideawake

Some far out stuff here.


17 posted on 05/27/2013 10:32:05 AM PDT by Borges
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To: Borges

He is a part of (the PE- Power Elite) - One Worlder.
Protege of Nelson Rockefeller.

In Bob Woodward’s and Carl Berstein’s The Final Days(1976), they wrote that in [Gen. Alexander] Haig’s presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as ‘dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.”


18 posted on 05/27/2013 10:58:10 AM PDT by Sheapdog (Chew the meat, spit out the bones)
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To: Sheapdog

I always associated him with Nixon’s foreign policy boldness.


19 posted on 05/27/2013 11:01:10 AM PDT by Borges
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To: Borges

FYI , Kissinger served in WW2 in the 84th Infantry division “railsplitters” ,, my father has a boot camp graduation photo with him and Kissinger...


20 posted on 05/27/2013 2:37:53 PM PDT by Neidermeyer (I used to be disgusted , now I try to be amused.)
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