Invariably, Kissinger is described as the quintessential realpolitik statesman. Grandin, instead, lays Kissinger bare as a radical relativist, a postmodernist avant la lettre, an almost romantic believer in the ability to create one’s own truth. It was Kissinger’s relativist philosophy of history, Grandin argues, which has been his “chief contribution to American militarism” and “restoring the imperial presidency.” The book gives this aspect of Kissinger’s thought the thorough investigation it deserves.[...]
This worldview didn’t distinguish between “good” and “bad.” In a 1953 Harvard seminar, Kissinger tellingly “used Kantian existentialism (the idea that human beings are radically free) to undermine Kantian morality. ‘We can hardly insist,’ he said, ‘on both our freedom and on the necessity of our values.’” [...]
Managing perception underpinned Kissinger’s call to develop “credible threats” (preferring smaller tactical nuclear weapons over the all-annihilating bombs) and to make the enemy believe in our ferocity through “savage” actions, well-timed small wars, and saturation bombing. “Secrecy and spectacle,” Grandin notes, “the covert and the overt,” describe Kissinger’s true legacy and “have come to comprise a unified form of modern imperial power.”
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