We live in the world that Henry Kissinger made

When U.S. forces bombed and then invaded Cambodia in 1970, many Americans were shocked, both at the mass slaughter of bystanders and at the fact that it was done without a declaration of war.   Nowadays such actions have come to be regarded as normal.

Historian Greg Grandin, in his new book, KISSINGER’S SHADOW: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman, says the normalization of military aggression and mass killing of civilians is due to the influence of Henry Kissinger, not just as national security adviser and secretary of state under the Nixon and Ford administrations, but as an influential public intellectual and elder statesman.

Kissinger’s bloody record includes the prolonging of the Vietnam conflict, the carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, support for Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor and massacres of minorities and dissidents, the overthrow of the democratically-elected Allende government in Chile, sponsorship of South American death squads through Operation Condor, support for white mercenaries fighting African liberation movements and much else.

But U.S. military interventions, covert actions and war crimes did not begin with Kissinger nor, for that matter, with the Cold War, nor are such things unique to the United States.

The real significance of Kissinger, according to Grandin, was that he, more than anyone else, was responsible for the overcoming of the “Vietnam syndrome” – the idea that U.S. use of force should be restrained by morality, law and prudence, and that so many Americans have come, without realizing it, to accept Kissinger’s philosophy of power.

Kissinger was an admirer of the German philosopher and historian Oswald Spengler, who believed that civilizations rise when they have powerful leaders whose understanding is based on sound instinct and intuition.  Spengler believed they decline when leaders limit themselves to sterile reasoning and empirical fact.

While Spengler believed that Western civilization was in a state of irreversible decline, Kissinger thought that this could be reversed by statesmen with the strength of will to ignore the “fact men” and impose their vision on reality.

Kissinger, according to Grandin, believed that power was a dynamic process.  The only way a nation could maintain power was to participate in the struggle for power.  A nation whose leaders stayed on the sidelines would only become weak.

Right, wrong and the “wrong” side of history

When Leon Trotsky was in exile the Soviet Union after losing his power struggle with Joseph Stalin, he still led a tiny splinter group.  He expelled dissidents from the group, saying he had consigned them “to the dust bin of history.”

Leon Trotsky

There are certain unstated assumptions in that remark, and in any statement about the right or wrong side of history.   The assumptions are that (1) the course of history is predictable, (2) the outcome of history is just and (3) being on the winning side proves you were right.

I disagree with all these assumptions.  I don’t think the course of history is predictable. I don’t think the outcome of history is necessarily just and I don’t think being a winner proves you are right.

Just to be clear, I agree that gay couples ought to enjoy the same rights as straight married couples.  I think this is a question of right and wrong, not of the right or wrong side of history.  However, I don’t think that people who were slower to see this than I was should be fired from their jobs or driven out of business merely because of their personal opinions.

But gay marriage is not the topic of this post.  The topic is why philosophies of history are bad guides to moral and ethical philosophy.