> Archer Blood, the State Department’s consul general in Bengal, sent a cable to Washington on March 27. “Here in Decca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror by the Pak[istani] military,” Blood wrote. “Evidence continues to mount that the MLA authorities have list of AWAMI League supporters whom they are systematically eliminating by seeking them out in their homes and shooting them down.
> He and 20 diplomats later sent a famous protest telegram in which he called what was occurring “genocide.” Kissinger responded to Blood’s complaints by dismissing him from his post. “The use of power against seeming odds pays off,” Kissinger observed regarding the crackdown.
It is important to keep in mind that Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
He's also responsible for numerous foreign policy failures (with genocidal results) as well. He's generally considered a polarizing figure. He doesn't strike me as a deserving candidate
> The death toll is commonly estimated between at 200,000 and 3 million. Kissinger’s tacit support for the massacres in Bangladesh is one of many incidents contributing to his poor record on human rights.
such a person should be sent for life in hardest prison or executed, not walking around with such an award.
I mean, read the article. he laughs about masacres being done. some days, I feel ashamed to be part of the mankind for what we're doing here or there. today is another day like that
Probably because he started diplomatic relations with China, pulled us out of Vietnam
The U.S. left Vietnam because it lost the political will to continue in a mission that most of its citizenry began to see as a lost cause (on the heels of various other troubles on the domestic front). Kissinger, Nixon, and everyone else was just following the music, by that point.
[And because he] didn't start or escalate a military conflict.
Cambodia?
You want to throw all that out because of a strongly worded letter related to a territorial dispute that is still going on 40 years later?
That's not what the person above you was saying, of course.
He was awarded the Nobel for the failed cease-fire negotiation with Vietnam in 1973, that war dragged on for two more bloody years before USA would admit that it had lost. Meanwhile he was illegally carpet bombing Cambodia, as well as kidnapping and murdering his way through latin america.
Us was on the genocidal pakistan side. Makes you wonder when would we stop rotating mistakes of the past. We're still supporting terrorists in Syria by calling them moderate rebels
Every time these sorts of things come up, we see contemporary Americans excusing the actions of their state as 'admissible under the circumstances' .. however, one has to wonder just what form of circumstances would be appropriate for this to be happening to the United States, i.e. - if a foreign state had done this to the US, would it be acceptable?
No, of course not - not ever.
So, the point of these stories seems to be to point out the hypocrisy of the current generation of Americans - who justify American supremacy at the cost of a great deal of moral altitude. Surely this bubble is going to burst, one day, and we won't have a generation of Americans who justify the crimes of their state against others', but rather accept responsibility and actually put the actors in jail? One can only hope.
I hope it's a very long time before acting to further the interests of the United States becomes a crime in the United States.
Edited to add: And I'm really surprised to see several people, I doubt any of whom would find positive connotations in the phrase "American exceptionalism", nonetheless arguing by trivial implication that the United States should unilaterally engage in military operations, within the territory of a sovereign state then being courted toward alliance, in order to change the outcome of a secessionist insurrection then taking place within that state.
You hopefully know that a lot of things that are sold as in the interest of the US are not really in the interest of it but only in the interest of some politicians or other players.
Only a fool would think otherwise. But I don't see how that's significant here; opening diplomatic relations with China in the midst of the Cold War was very much in the interests of the United States.
...which, if true, would have resulted either in Soviet domination of Europe, or, when Soviet and American ambitions bluntly collided, a hot war instead of a cold one. It may be possible to regard either of these outcomes as preferable to the one which actually occurred, but I have to confess myself unable to imagine how.
Actually, this is what happened. Western imperialism ran rampant, we have human rights violations and heinous, heinous conditions for significant parts of the world, all because the West wants its way. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. The only reason you're arguing is because its your team that is doing all the damage.
Don't mistake me for being particularly starry-eyed about American imperial ambitions, or America in general; I'm a nationalist by default, because I'd rather live in a strong country than a weak one, not because I'm especially in love with its frankly rather adolescent national mythos.
That said, based on all the historical evidence I've seen, if I had to choose between living in an American satrapy or a Soviet one, I'd take the former without a qualm. US history isn't without its stains, but in all things there are degrees, and to claim there's nothing to choose between the two powers is arrantly ahistorical.
That was what the nukes and large tank forces were there to prevent. There's a big difference between parking them in friendly countries which have asked for them as part of mutual defence against said invasion, versus destabilising other countries in order to install compliant governments so you can park your tanks there.
There is always the question of how much the cold war created its own reaction: on the other side there would have been generals talking up the risk of "unconstrained US expansion into the western USSR".
What was the alternative to participating? Are you suggesting that abandoning Europe to its own devices in the late 40s would have been in the interests of the US?
If you don't even have a proposed alternative to participating in the Cold War, then how can you say that doing so was not in the interests of the US? The worth of an action can only be judged in comparison to its alternatives, because you always have to make a choice. Even doing nothing is a choice.
(I realize that "conspiracy theory" bears a strong negative connotation, but I'm not really sure what else to call it - "cybernetic", in the sense of that discipline, is the closest neutral adjective I came up with, but that doesn't really seem to capture it.)
Hmm, yes, I guess if you're of the opinion that the Soviets were never a threat anyway then the US's role in the Cold War would look pretty silly.
I sense that a lot of people think about MAD as spring into existence one day as "if war, then all die" without any buildup. There seems to be poor understanding of the fact that it started with great Soviet military superiority, evolved through vast American nuclear superiority, and only eventually settled on mutual deterrence around the mid to late 1960s. I often see people talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis as narrowly averting the end of humanity, so clearly there is a general lack of appreciation of how this stuff evolved.
I do not subscribe to a requirement that criticism must contain solutions.
History tells us that the opportunity cost was huge, delayed social progress in the US, and enriched the same people who have benefited from battle mentalities throughout the ages. The Chilcot report is a refrain, a repeated theme.
> I do not subscribe to a requirement that criticism must contain solutions.
The Cold War is part of the past. No solution is necessary, or indeed even possible. You're not being asked to provide one, but instead to defend the historiography you've been at some pains in this and other threads to advance. Would you like to do so?
I agree when it comes to criticism in general, but the statement that it didn't serve US interests is quite specific. I think you ought to be able to at least handwave what could have been better. This isn't like criticizing the plot of a movie, where they didn't even have to make that movie to begin with, and "that movie was terrible, they might as well have just kept the money in the bank" is always valid in some way. Here, a choice had to be made, even doing nothing would have been doing something.
You say that the opportunity cost was huge. What are you comparing it to? "Opportunity cost" implies some other possibility that you're comparing against. How can you know the opportunity cost was huge if you have no idea what you're comparing against? Or do you know, and you just don't want to talk about it?
The Cold War in Europe was probably OK but things like the Vietnam War or overthrowing democratically elected leaders because they leaned socialist was very questionable. For example overthrowing Mosaddegh in Iran was probably not in the best interest of the US and caused a lot of long term problems.
Yikes. What a load of vague, nationalist bullshit. By apparently justifying ANY given action if it favors your country or your concept of your country, are you proud of the historical company you keep?
When the instigators and butchers of World War I (A completely pointless, devastating conflict) didn't get torn apart by their own people, I have little hope for responsibility and justice.
No, the more likely way for that bubble to burst is for these things to start happening to America, with citizens of the aggressor state justifying them as 'admissible under the circumstances.' Alas, political culture is not particularly retrospective - I doubt anyone would see the connection.
> When the instigators and butchers of World War I ... didn't get torn apart by their own people, I have little hope for responsibility and justice.
You have to understand that the instigators of WWI, and other subsequent wars, did not come from outer space. To their fellow countrymen and women, they were patriots. National heroes.
That applies even today.
A few years ago, I read an article in the Washington Post online. The writer said that when somebody spotted Donald Rumsfeld in the subway and pointed to him, practically everybody in the car gave him a standing ovation. That was after he'd resigned from office.
The attitude you describe has been the foundation of every nation's moral policy for thousands of years. Thucydides set it as follows in the Melian Dialogue, in which the Athenian and Melian ambassadors discuss the subjection of Melos:
"We hope that you [Melians], instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
The Melians responded that the Athenians should nevertheless concern themselves with what was right because the Athenians themselves might be weak someday.
This was the fate of the Melians, after they refused to surrender upfront and forced the Athenians to fight:
[...] the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.
the fact that US for decades openly and covertly supported such an plain evil regime as Pakistani one (on top of other similar all over the world) tells me all I need to know about lack of any morality of US foreign efforts.
I'm not buying some fairy tale of lesser of two evils while supporting the bigger one. they could do better if they wanted, which would incredibly affect millions and millions of human beings, but they've chosen not to.
If the US had dropped Pakistan in 1971 and teamed up with the USSR to support India and Bangladesh, who would prop up Pakistan?
Saudi Arabia? They have money to offer and no much else.
China? It's 1971. China is in no shape to get into foreign adventures whatsoever. Even if they tried, the Soviets could always rattle some sabers in the Far East and scare them off.
If the US had completely abandoned Pakistan, it would not be able to use it as a proxy base for war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. It would not be able to, in Zbigniew Brzezinski's words, be able to "give the Soviet Union its Vietnam."
You should not be moralistic in thinking about international relations, because that is not foreign policy makers think.
You should not use time travel when thinking about international relations, either. The question is about what the US chose in 1971. The Soviets weren't in Afghanistan until 1979.
That doesn't change the fact that exactly the reason that the US backed Pakistan was as a foothold near Central Asia to counter Soviet regional influence. The particular time and place at which that later became useful, obviously, was not predicted in detail at the time, but the concept of the need was.
Now, whether the cost of supporting that regime is justified by either its actual utility or the reasonably anticipated utility at the time the decision was made are different questions, but you can't really fully discuss the decision without considering its actual rationale.
But at that time, the US had both India and Iran as friends. Having Pakistan as a friend to plug the gap between them seems like a less important goal, especially if it comes at the price of alienating India.
The thinking may have been something like: India isn't going to go into the Communist orbit even if we offend it, because of their border trouble with China. But Pakistan might. So it's more important that we keep Pakistan as a friend than to keep China.
Na, US didn't have India as friends. Specially because India started the Non Aligned Movement (basically we aren't choosing sides, we'll have relations with both US and Soviet)
Americans had the attitude that if you aren't with us, then you are against us. Plus India had a socialist economy
> If the US had completely abandoned Pakistan, it would not be able to use it as a proxy base for war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
You mean, we wouldn't be able to fund the radical Islamists that went on to found al-Qaeda and the Taliban, contributed to inspiring (and later more directly assisting) fellow Islamists elsewhere, including those who later became al-Qaeda in Iraq before becoming the Islamic State in Iraq (then the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, then simply the Islamic State.)
> You should not be moralistic in thinking about international relations, because that is not foreign policy makers think.
All decisions about priorities boil down, at their root, to moral preferences.
"If there's change, it could be worse." That is a terrible reason to support evil. And we actually did worse. We overthrew democratically elected governments to install police states because it was too "lefty" for our tastes. Iran, for example.
Agreed but the best route isn't a matter of choosing the right leader in other countries but staying out of other countries elective processes IMO. You can have voluntary diplomatic relationships of varying degrees, but this idea of influencing foriegn power players doesn't sit well with me. I'd rather their power came from local sources and therefore is incentivized to benefit the local population and local economic interests.
It's not just the US either, so much of the middle easts problems is the willingness for half or more of the countries to be proxies for the bigger states wishing for hegemony. Both sides end up losing more often then not. Just like Yemen and Syria.
A bit off topic but I often wonder what Iran or Iraq would be like today if they didn't engage in their awful war in the 1980s. They'd be much nicer places to live and most likely in far better economic shape and without the baggage of war (growing up with dead relatives/fathers and stories of violence as examples of greatness). But they would also have much larger militaries and I'm curious if their proxy wars would have just been even more prevelent then it is now.
> You can have voluntary diplomatic relationships of varying degrees, but this idea of influencing foriegn power players doesn't sit well with me. I'd rather their power came from local sources and therefore is incentivized to benefit the local population and local economic interests.
Think it through from the other side. You're in a small, relatively minor country without the ability to sway the whole world. Your economic interests depend heavily on a handful of more powerful neighbors. Are you going to sit on your hands as the local power coming from local sources trying to look after the local economic interests of your neighbors' local populations makes decisions that will impoverish your local populations through their local economic interests?
You might say "Yes! Yes I would, because to do otherwise is unethical!". However, I'd lay good odds that your local populations and local economic interests would prefer leadership interested in actively defending those local economic interests, even through foreign power players. I'd further hazard a guess that these preferences might find expressed in electoral processes.
There might be benefits and protection from some neighbours but the small countries are rarely left with much sway in the conversation. There will always be a compromise and I get the impression the vast majority of countries are too quick to take that compromise under the oversold promises of globalism.
I hope the pendulum swings back and countries still engage in global trade but put their own priorities first instead of making themselves vulnerable to the real power players.
We're speaking abstractly but I think this is the gist of recent developments in globalism, what people are starting to grasp after the full destruction of mercantilism in the last half century.
Having little influence and choosing not to use it is not generally preferable to using whatever little influence you have to most local populations acting as local sources of power in pursuit of their own local economic interests.
Concretely, I think you're advocating for a series of deeply sub-optimal locally protectionist local regimes. I'm having a hard time grasping how this is supposed to be better for everyone.
There is no morality in international relations. The international stage is ultimately an anarchy, and it's a dog-eat-dog world. Countries which make decisions based on morality rather than self-interest lose out to countries that focus on results.
So why don't people call it as it? Anything that has to do with foreign politics always sounds like propaganda to me or some weird sense of moral superiority.
Because it works to sway the masses. If you think you should take some action, telling your people that it's moral will help get support for it. If you think some other country shouldn't take some action, telling their people it's immoral will hurt support.
Sounds like there'd be a fair amount of morality in international politics, if democracy were given a chance instead of unilateral action by shady oligarchs with psychopathic ideas about how "it's a dog-eat-dog world".
I object to calling that psychopathic. Acknowledging the nature of reality is never wrong. It would only be psychopathic if you not only acknowledged it, but celebrated it.
I'm saying that countries do act this way. I'm also saying that countries which don't tend to lose out to those that do. That's not the same as saying that countries must act this way, it merely explains why they all do.
You're saying that they do act that way but you're also objecting to calling leaders who act that way psychopathic. Choosing to do what is necessary for the continued victory of one's country even to the extent of assisting genocide is psychopathic. Good people, even if they "recognize the nature of reality" should allow themselves to be defeated rather than assist in genocide.
No, I object to calling the idea that countries act this way psychopathic.
Call the leaders whatever names you want, I'm not fond of any of them. But I saw that "psychopathic ideas" business as being aimed straight at me, not merely the people involved in international relations.
I'm sorry, I did not intend a personal slight. I understand that world leaders really do think like this, and I even think I somewhat understand why; I just think it's not an acceptable state of affairs because it's a horrible way to relate to the rest of the world, and what's worse it doesn't even match up to how the actual citizens of those countries feel. I would love to think that if we asked regular people their opinion more instead of isolating our leaders in ivory towers away from normal daily life and feeding them scary realpolitik stories, we'd have a higher-trust global society, but (as you say) possibly this only works if everyone does it...
This view seems utterly at odds with what I've read of history. The individuals making the decisions about the actions of states take action for moral reasons all the time. Look at, I don't know, all the wars the UK got into in the 19th century through trying to stop the slave trade, half the decision making of the powers getting into World War I, the US's conspicuous failure to annex the territory it captured in WWII or countless other things. I certainly wouldn't say that any country is entirely selfless, that doesn't happen either. And there's a wide range of how different factors affect a country's balance between the two. But even Nazi Germany and Japan did things for racist, anti-communist, and (in Japan's case) anti-colonialist things at times that weren't in the interest of furthering the power of their states.
The US's good treatment of conquered territories following WWII set it up for the global hegemony it enjoys to this day. The Nazis and Japanese lost the war in a devastating fashion in part because they behaved so stupidly due to their ideology. I'm not too familiar with the UK's fight against slavery, but I'd wager that their enemies were the ones who suffered the most from shutting down the slave trade.
Thats how I would expect it to happen to, but then I live in a tiny country in Scandinavia which would have no chance at all of defending itself if didn't have an alliance with the US. An alliance the US gets almost nothing out of.
The US is committed to defending Taiwan as if it was its native soil, despite it being basically on the other side of the planet and posing no significant strategic benefit. The US has such treaties with a ton of countries (http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/collectivedefense/).
Despite this the US "wins" the international relations game completely (if we go with the KvK definition that war is politics by other means and its aim is to enforce its will on somebody else).
It's naive to suggest that "US Foreign Policy" is somehow specific to the US. Most, if not all, of the major European Nations actively support these same policies and have a much longer history in many of the conflict zones around the world. This case is particularly illustrative given the long history that the UK had in the region and role in the partition of India.
> Most, if not all, of the major European Nations actively support these same policies
That's because they're vassal states. Our foreign policy is their foreign policy. Their leaders don't have much of a choice in the matter. Either they play along or we find a way to get rid of them.
France sure acted like a vassal state during the Second Gulf War. I remember their vociferous support of US policy, especially one Dominique de Villepin. Same with Turkey; they opened up access for the 4th ID to attack through Northern Iraq. Let's see who else was a vassal; Germany?
This supposition of yours is silly. Europe isn't a vassal of the US. Each country follows its own goals and priorities.
> This supposition of yours is silly. Europe isn't a vassal of the US. Each country follows its own goals and priorities.
Then you don't know what's happening in Europe, or the relationship between it's various states and the US.
Just an example: Even when European states are taking economic hits from the economic sanctions against Russia, then're still going along with it. How many times have you read in the Western press that Polish or French farmers are protesting against the sanctions?
While American influence may be unpopular, Russian influence would be even less popular. I think after the shooting down of the civilian airliner by Russian-affiliated forces in Ukraine the sanctions were very popular.
At this point we do need to remember that, while it's convenient to regard a country as having a single point of view and foreign policy, in a democracy there can be significant dissent and disagreement.
(After Brexit I'm not sure what our foreign policy is any more...)
I was curious about why the photo of the carrier shows servicemen standing to spell out E=mc2 in the photo above the article. It was to commemorate that the USS Enterprise was the first nuclear powered carrier.
Here is a photo[1] of the same ship in 2011, marking 50 years of nuclear naval power (from this page[2])
An excellent two sentence summary of the Kashmir conflicts:
"Pakistan and India almost immediately went to war over Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state whose Hindu ruler elected to join India in exchange for assistance putting down a local revolt. The incident escalated to a full-scale confrontation which simmers to this day."
A very nice article, one thing that can be added is that Indira Gandhi was in favor of entering the war far earlier but was dissuaded by army staff who waited for the monsoons. The monsoons would make China's entry into the war impossible. So it was not just chance that China did not enter. From Wikipedia:
"Towards the end of April 1971, Indira Gandhi, who was Prime Minister of India at that time, asked Manekshaw if he was ready to go to war with Pakistan. Manekshaw refused, saying that his single armoured division and two infantry divisions were deployed elsewhere, that only 13 of his 189 tanks were fit to fight, and that they would be competing for rail carriage with the grain harvest at that point of time. He also pointed out that the Himalayan passes would soon open up, with the forthcoming monsoon in East Pakistan, which would result in heavy flooding. When Indira Gandhi asked the cabinet to leave the room and the chief to stay, he offered to resign. She declined to accept it, but sought his advice. He then said he could guarantee victory if she would allow him to prepare for the conflict on his terms, and set a date for it. These were acceded to by the Prime Minister."
Sam Manekshaw (India's Chief of army staff at the time) is quite an interesting person. If anyone's interested, take a look at his wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Manekshaw
Here are some of his choice quotes:
On the military knowledge of politicians: "I wonder whether those of our political masters who have been put in charge of the defence of the country can distinguish a mortar from a motor; a gun from a howitzer; a guerrilla from a gorilla, although a great many resemble the latter."
A 'Yes man' is a dangerous man. He is a menace. He will go very far. He can become a minister, a secretary or a Field Marshall but he can never become a leader nor, ever be respected. He will be used by his superiors, disliked by his colleagues and despised by his subordinates. So discard the 'Yes man'.
> An excellent two sentence summary of the Kashmir conflicts
I really don't think that's a great summary of the conflict. It's the common narrative that's put forth, particularly in the US, because it makes sense through the lens of US foreign policy, but it doesn't really explain the full background and proper historical or political context.
I'm not going to provide an alternative, though, because I don't think the background of the conflict can be summarized in two sentences, any more than World War I can. Sure, you can say "the war happened because Franz Ferdinand got shot. This set off a chain of events which escalated into a global war" and you wouldn't be wrong. But that's the sort of explanation that really only makes sense of you already know the answer, which is the most dangerous kind.
Yes that two sentence summary does not even mention that Pakistan was invading, instead it says "local revolt" and it does not mention that India went to the UN instead of settling matters with their military strength which would have avoided embedding Pakistan into the matter.
Horrible summary actually.
1) "Local revolt"? Nopes, Pakistan invaded
2) Let's skip over multiple details like (India inviting UN/Pakistan not following UN guidelines/Increasing Islamization of the Kashmir valley/Ethnic cleansing of kashmiri hindus/Pakistan occupied Kashmir having less autonomy or democratic power than Indian Kashmir/Pakistan sponsoring of terrorism/Kashmir being fought over by three nuclear powers making it improbable to exist as an independent country)
>Indeed, a Soviet naval task force from Vladivostok consisting of a cruiser, a destroyer and two attack submarines under the command of Adm. Vladimir Kruglyakov intercepted Task Force 74 in the makings of a deadly Cold War standoff. Kruglyakov gave a rousing account in a T.V. interview of “encircling” the task force, surfacing his submarines in front of the Enterprise, opening the missile tubes and “blocking” the American ships.
"Archer Blood, the State Department’s consul general in Bengal, sent a cable to Washington on March 27. “Here in Decca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror by the Pak[istani] military,” Blood wrote. “Evidence continues to mount that the MLA authorities have list of AWAMI League supporters whom they are systematically eliminating by seeking them out in their homes and shooting them down.
“Among those marked for extinction in addition to the A.L. hierarchy are student leaders and university faculty. …
“Moreover, with the support of the Pak[istani] military, non-Bengali Muslims are systematically attacking poor people’s quarters and murdering Bengalis and Hindus.”
He and 20 diplomats later sent a famous protest telegram in which he called what was occurring “genocide.” Kissinger responded to Blood’s complaints by dismissing him from his post. “The use of power against seeming odds pays off,” Kissinger observed regarding the crackdown.
The death toll is commonly estimated between at 200,000 and 3 million. Kissinger’s tacit support for the massacres in Bangladesh is one of many incidents contributing to his poor record on human rights."
"In July 1971, Kissinger had already secretly flown from Pakistan to Beijing for the first diplomatic meeting between the United States and Communist China. “Yahya hasn’t had such fun since the last Hindu massacre!” Kissinger remarked."
Wow. It's hard to believe that this is the same Kissinger that's still held in high regard today.
> It's hard to believe that this is the same Kissinger that's still held in high regard today.
It's really not: the people that hold Kissinger in high regard today (and those that did so then) did so specifically because of things like this, not despite them.
Note, though, that regard for Kissinger is rather mixed; while some hold him in high regard, some think of him as one of America's leading war criminals.
He has from a position of incredible power with a clear knowledge of the consequences freely and directly aided and argued for genocide multiple times. His actions go well beyond simple war-crimes. There are very few individuals in the history of the world that have participated in more than one genocide. Henry Kissinger is one of the rare individuals in human history who is responsible for multiple genocides.
In the quote above, “Yahya hasn’t had such fun since the last Hindu massacre!”, Kissinger seems delight and reveal in about his crimes against humanity. He spent his life chasing the power necessary to perform such crimes and when given such power was happy to use it for hideous purposes.
Kissinger from the Nixon tapes:
“And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union,” he added, “it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”[0]
In one tape Nixon compares the genocide in Bangladesh to the Holocaust, Kissinger goes along with the comparison but argues that the genocide should still be aided[1].
“And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union,” he added, “it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
Wow, that is just shocking. Originally, I thought he was just another racist like Nixon. But for a Jewish holocaust survivor to make a comment like that... he seems to fit the textbook definition of a psychopath.
The book is not editorialized, it is just an collection of events. I'm not sure how the reviewer came to those conclusions.
If a reader had never heard anything about World War 2 perhaps it wouldn't be the first book to recommend or even number 10. Given the exhaustive pop culture coverage in movies along with endless documentaries and books one would assume reading Human Smoke in context would not leave a reader believing that Hitler was desperately trying to avoid war.
> The book is not editorialized, it is just an collection of events.
I'm not sure how you regard these as mutually exclusive. Are the events that go into the collection not chosen? Might they not be chosen with an eye toward suggesting conclusions which the one doing the choosing isn't quite bold enough to espouse outright, preferring instead to be able to say "well, that's just your interpretation" in reply to whatever criticism may come?
>The concentration camp of Ahlem was built on a hillside overlooking Hannover. Barbed wire surrounded it. And as our jeep traveled down the street skeletons in striped suits lined the road. There was a tunnel in the side of the hill where the inmates worked 20 hours a day in semi-darkness.
>I stopped the jeep. Cloth seemed to fall from the bodies, the head was held up by a stick that once might have been a throat. Poles hang from the sides where arms should be, poles are the legs. “What’s your name?” And the man’s eyes cloud and he takes off his hat in anticipation of a blow. “Folek… Folek Sama.” “Don’t take off your hat, you are free now.”
>And as I say it, I look over the camp. I see the huts, I observe the empty faces, the dead eyes. You are free now. I, with my pressed uniform, I have lived in filth and squalor, I haven’t been beaten and kicked. What kind of freedom can I offer? I see my friend enter one of the huts and come out with tears in his eyes. “Don’t go in there. We had to kick them to tell the dead from the living.”
>That is humanity in the 20th century. People reach such a stupor of suffering that life and death, animation or immobility can’t be differentiated any more. And then, who is dead and who is alive, the man whose agonized face stares at me from the cot or Folek Sama, who stands with bowed head and emaciated body? Who was lucky, the man who draws circles in the sand and mumbles “I am free” or the bones that are interred in the hillside?
>Folek Sama, your foot has been crushed so that you can’t run away, your face is 40, your body is ageless, yet all your birth certificate reads is 16. And I stand there with my clean clothes and make a speech to you and your comrades.
>Folek Sama, humanity stands accused in you. I, Joe Smith, human dignity, everybody has failed you. You should be preserved in cement up here on the hillside for future generation[s] to look upon and take stock. Human dignity, objective values have stopped at this barbed wire. What differentiates you and your comrades from animals[?] Why do we in the 20th century countenance you?
>Yet, Folek, you are still human. You stand before me and tears run down your cheek. Hysterical sobbing follows. Go ahead and cry, Folek Sama, because your tears testify to your humanity, because they will be absorbed in this cursed soil, dedicating it.
>As long as conscience exists as a conception in this world you will personify it. Nothing done for you will ever restore you.
>You are eternal in this respect.
That is his own discription[0] that he wrote shortly after being part of a US army group who liberated a concentration camp.
Kissinger lost 13 family members, including his grandmother to the camps.
How do you reconcile the two Kissingers? The one who architectures genocides, makes genocide jokes, doesn't think a Soviet Jewish-Holocaust is "an American concern" and the one who demands the world have a conscience?
One is the private Kissinger and one is Kissinger-the-statesman? As engineer if you had me writing code to optimize railway transportations of prisoners in a nazi-style execution program I would be split between the engineer part of me and the part of me that would write the best possible code, and the part about me that thinks genocide is wrong.
The difference between the two is that I wouldn't let my engineer part win, but Kissinger would.
> Note, though, that regard for Kissinger is rather mixed; while some hold him in high regard, some think of him as one of America's leading war criminals.
The people who consider him a war criminal can't do anything about it. For those that don't, he's a national hero, and will be buried with full honors when his time comes. Sadly, that says a lot about the moral compass of this country.
I saw him talk in my locale when I grew up to much fanfare.
As a youth I was more conservative. But even then, when I thought I liked him, he was pressed by more liberal students of the local college about covert action in Cambodia, or another contentious issue.
His smug response and style, as in history will remember favorably for my GTD style of realpolitik, even then far more conservative than my current self, found that repulsive and alarming.
I expected that from fellow HSers. But then again I was young and did not realize all politicians in the US are welcomed to act like children.
Coming from German Jewish background, how can he himself not cringe on the effectiveness of genocide comment?
There is also a personal connection. The Clintons and the Kissingers also usually spend Christmas together at Oscar del la Renta's villa in the Dominican Repulic [as has been widely reported by Gawker and other "tabloids"].
I agree with your point here, but you need to go into it further.
What do you think his goals were? What were the side-effects of his methods? How did the latter detract from the former?
For example, if the goal is American hegemony, and only foreign losses were realized in pursuit of that goal, then it's a clear victory from a policy standpoint. Morality doesn't enter into it.
> I always felt odd that US supported a military government over a democratic one
The US supports authoritarianism over democracy all the time. Democracy, in the eyes of US foreign policy rhetoric, is only legitimate if the democratically elected government is friendly towards the US and aligned with US interests.
The US has no problems with toppling a democratically elected government in order to install a dictator or puppet leader. It's happened many times, and I imagine it will happen again.
It was never going to. It was only a tool to motivate docility, impose repression, and achieve political gain.
M.A.D. was known on all sides for decades before I was taught about it in the 80s. Nobody who could influence the Big Red Button was at all interested in relinquishing the power that they would lose in the event of an ICBM war.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] thread> He and 20 diplomats later sent a famous protest telegram in which he called what was occurring “genocide.” Kissinger responded to Blood’s complaints by dismissing him from his post. “The use of power against seeming odds pays off,” Kissinger observed regarding the crackdown.
It is important to keep in mind that Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
You want to throw all that out because of a strongly worded letter related to a territorial dispute that is still going on 40 years later?
such a person should be sent for life in hardest prison or executed, not walking around with such an award.
I mean, read the article. he laughs about masacres being done. some days, I feel ashamed to be part of the mankind for what we're doing here or there. today is another day like that
The U.S. left Vietnam because it lost the political will to continue in a mission that most of its citizenry began to see as a lost cause (on the heels of various other troubles on the domestic front). Kissinger, Nixon, and everyone else was just following the music, by that point.
[And because he] didn't start or escalate a military conflict.
Cambodia?
You want to throw all that out because of a strongly worded letter related to a territorial dispute that is still going on 40 years later?
That's not what the person above you was saying, of course.
When Nixon announced this to the nation, his newspeak term for it was "peace with honor in Vietnam."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXTiz8F6S5E
So all those killings that took place in South America were not military conflicts.
No, of course not - not ever.
So, the point of these stories seems to be to point out the hypocrisy of the current generation of Americans - who justify American supremacy at the cost of a great deal of moral altitude. Surely this bubble is going to burst, one day, and we won't have a generation of Americans who justify the crimes of their state against others', but rather accept responsibility and actually put the actors in jail? One can only hope.
Edited to add: And I'm really surprised to see several people, I doubt any of whom would find positive connotations in the phrase "American exceptionalism", nonetheless arguing by trivial implication that the United States should unilaterally engage in military operations, within the territory of a sovereign state then being courted toward alliance, in order to change the outcome of a secessionist insurrection then taking place within that state.
All of these things have furthered the interests of the nation states that carried them out.
"Interests" are not self-justifying.
That said, based on all the historical evidence I've seen, if I had to choose between living in an American satrapy or a Soviet one, I'd take the former without a qualm. US history isn't without its stains, but in all things there are degrees, and to claim there's nothing to choose between the two powers is arrantly ahistorical.
There is always the question of how much the cold war created its own reaction: on the other side there would have been generals talking up the risk of "unconstrained US expansion into the western USSR".
(I realize that "conspiracy theory" bears a strong negative connotation, but I'm not really sure what else to call it - "cybernetic", in the sense of that discipline, is the closest neutral adjective I came up with, but that doesn't really seem to capture it.)
I sense that a lot of people think about MAD as spring into existence one day as "if war, then all die" without any buildup. There seems to be poor understanding of the fact that it started with great Soviet military superiority, evolved through vast American nuclear superiority, and only eventually settled on mutual deterrence around the mid to late 1960s. I often see people talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis as narrowly averting the end of humanity, so clearly there is a general lack of appreciation of how this stuff evolved.
History tells us that the opportunity cost was huge, delayed social progress in the US, and enriched the same people who have benefited from battle mentalities throughout the ages. The Chilcot report is a refrain, a repeated theme.
The Cold War is part of the past. No solution is necessary, or indeed even possible. You're not being asked to provide one, but instead to defend the historiography you've been at some pains in this and other threads to advance. Would you like to do so?
You say that the opportunity cost was huge. What are you comparing it to? "Opportunity cost" implies some other possibility that you're comparing against. How can you know the opportunity cost was huge if you have no idea what you're comparing against? Or do you know, and you just don't want to talk about it?
No, the more likely way for that bubble to burst is for these things to start happening to America, with citizens of the aggressor state justifying them as 'admissible under the circumstances.' Alas, political culture is not particularly retrospective - I doubt anyone would see the connection.
You have to understand that the instigators of WWI, and other subsequent wars, did not come from outer space. To their fellow countrymen and women, they were patriots. National heroes.
That applies even today.
A few years ago, I read an article in the Washington Post online. The writer said that when somebody spotted Donald Rumsfeld in the subway and pointed to him, practically everybody in the car gave him a standing ovation. That was after he'd resigned from office.
Says a lot about us.
Alas, that's precisely my point. If the world were right, we would not tolerate barbarism. It's not, though.
"We hope that you [Melians], instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
The Melians responded that the Athenians should nevertheless concern themselves with what was right because the Athenians themselves might be weak someday.
This was the fate of the Melians, after they refused to surrender upfront and forced the Athenians to fight:
[...] the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.
I'm not buying some fairy tale of lesser of two evils while supporting the bigger one. they could do better if they wanted, which would incredibly affect millions and millions of human beings, but they've chosen not to.
It could collapse and be replaced by something better, or something worse. Or it could just be supported by another super power.
But you're right, fairy tales sound nice but aren't true.
Saudi Arabia? They have money to offer and no much else.
China? It's 1971. China is in no shape to get into foreign adventures whatsoever. Even if they tried, the Soviets could always rattle some sabers in the Far East and scare them off.
You should not be moralistic in thinking about international relations, because that is not foreign policy makers think.
Now, whether the cost of supporting that regime is justified by either its actual utility or the reasonably anticipated utility at the time the decision was made are different questions, but you can't really fully discuss the decision without considering its actual rationale.
But at that time, the US had both India and Iran as friends. Having Pakistan as a friend to plug the gap between them seems like a less important goal, especially if it comes at the price of alienating India.
The thinking may have been something like: India isn't going to go into the Communist orbit even if we offend it, because of their border trouble with China. But Pakistan might. So it's more important that we keep Pakistan as a friend than to keep China.
Americans had the attitude that if you aren't with us, then you are against us. Plus India had a socialist economy
You mean, we wouldn't be able to fund the radical Islamists that went on to found al-Qaeda and the Taliban, contributed to inspiring (and later more directly assisting) fellow Islamists elsewhere, including those who later became al-Qaeda in Iraq before becoming the Islamic State in Iraq (then the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, then simply the Islamic State.)
> You should not be moralistic in thinking about international relations, because that is not foreign policy makers think.
All decisions about priorities boil down, at their root, to moral preferences.
Right, to use Pakistan as a tool in the Cold War, which was also a stupid and self-serving enterprise.
It's not just the US either, so much of the middle easts problems is the willingness for half or more of the countries to be proxies for the bigger states wishing for hegemony. Both sides end up losing more often then not. Just like Yemen and Syria.
A bit off topic but I often wonder what Iran or Iraq would be like today if they didn't engage in their awful war in the 1980s. They'd be much nicer places to live and most likely in far better economic shape and without the baggage of war (growing up with dead relatives/fathers and stories of violence as examples of greatness). But they would also have much larger militaries and I'm curious if their proxy wars would have just been even more prevelent then it is now.
Think it through from the other side. You're in a small, relatively minor country without the ability to sway the whole world. Your economic interests depend heavily on a handful of more powerful neighbors. Are you going to sit on your hands as the local power coming from local sources trying to look after the local economic interests of your neighbors' local populations makes decisions that will impoverish your local populations through their local economic interests?
You might say "Yes! Yes I would, because to do otherwise is unethical!". However, I'd lay good odds that your local populations and local economic interests would prefer leadership interested in actively defending those local economic interests, even through foreign power players. I'd further hazard a guess that these preferences might find expressed in electoral processes.
I hope the pendulum swings back and countries still engage in global trade but put their own priorities first instead of making themselves vulnerable to the real power players.
We're speaking abstractly but I think this is the gist of recent developments in globalism, what people are starting to grasp after the full destruction of mercantilism in the last half century.
Concretely, I think you're advocating for a series of deeply sub-optimal locally protectionist local regimes. I'm having a hard time grasping how this is supposed to be better for everyone.
Call the leaders whatever names you want, I'm not fond of any of them. But I saw that "psychopathic ideas" business as being aimed straight at me, not merely the people involved in international relations.
The US is committed to defending Taiwan as if it was its native soil, despite it being basically on the other side of the planet and posing no significant strategic benefit. The US has such treaties with a ton of countries (http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/collectivedefense/).
Despite this the US "wins" the international relations game completely (if we go with the KvK definition that war is politics by other means and its aim is to enforce its will on somebody else).
That's because they're vassal states. Our foreign policy is their foreign policy. Their leaders don't have much of a choice in the matter. Either they play along or we find a way to get rid of them.
This supposition of yours is silly. Europe isn't a vassal of the US. Each country follows its own goals and priorities.
Then you don't know what's happening in Europe, or the relationship between it's various states and the US.
Just an example: Even when European states are taking economic hits from the economic sanctions against Russia, then're still going along with it. How many times have you read in the Western press that Polish or French farmers are protesting against the sanctions?
(After Brexit I'm not sure what our foreign policy is any more...)
Here is a photo[1] of the same ship in 2011, marking 50 years of nuclear naval power (from this page[2])
[1] http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/0265az.jpg [2] http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/65b.htm
"Pakistan and India almost immediately went to war over Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state whose Hindu ruler elected to join India in exchange for assistance putting down a local revolt. The incident escalated to a full-scale confrontation which simmers to this day."
A very nice article, one thing that can be added is that Indira Gandhi was in favor of entering the war far earlier but was dissuaded by army staff who waited for the monsoons. The monsoons would make China's entry into the war impossible. So it was not just chance that China did not enter. From Wikipedia:
"Towards the end of April 1971, Indira Gandhi, who was Prime Minister of India at that time, asked Manekshaw if he was ready to go to war with Pakistan. Manekshaw refused, saying that his single armoured division and two infantry divisions were deployed elsewhere, that only 13 of his 189 tanks were fit to fight, and that they would be competing for rail carriage with the grain harvest at that point of time. He also pointed out that the Himalayan passes would soon open up, with the forthcoming monsoon in East Pakistan, which would result in heavy flooding. When Indira Gandhi asked the cabinet to leave the room and the chief to stay, he offered to resign. She declined to accept it, but sought his advice. He then said he could guarantee victory if she would allow him to prepare for the conflict on his terms, and set a date for it. These were acceded to by the Prime Minister."
Here are some of his choice quotes:
On the military knowledge of politicians: "I wonder whether those of our political masters who have been put in charge of the defence of the country can distinguish a mortar from a motor; a gun from a howitzer; a guerrilla from a gorilla, although a great many resemble the latter."
A 'Yes man' is a dangerous man. He is a menace. He will go very far. He can become a minister, a secretary or a Field Marshall but he can never become a leader nor, ever be respected. He will be used by his superiors, disliked by his colleagues and despised by his subordinates. So discard the 'Yes man'.
I really don't think that's a great summary of the conflict. It's the common narrative that's put forth, particularly in the US, because it makes sense through the lens of US foreign policy, but it doesn't really explain the full background and proper historical or political context.
I'm not going to provide an alternative, though, because I don't think the background of the conflict can be summarized in two sentences, any more than World War I can. Sure, you can say "the war happened because Franz Ferdinand got shot. This set off a chain of events which escalated into a global war" and you wouldn't be wrong. But that's the sort of explanation that really only makes sense of you already know the answer, which is the most dangerous kind.
>Indeed, a Soviet naval task force from Vladivostok consisting of a cruiser, a destroyer and two attack submarines under the command of Adm. Vladimir Kruglyakov intercepted Task Force 74 in the makings of a deadly Cold War standoff. Kruglyakov gave a rousing account in a T.V. interview of “encircling” the task force, surfacing his submarines in front of the Enterprise, opening the missile tubes and “blocking” the American ships.
Also, the eyewitness account (from the OPs link): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQchmaC5-q8&feature=youtu.be...
“Among those marked for extinction in addition to the A.L. hierarchy are student leaders and university faculty. …
“Moreover, with the support of the Pak[istani] military, non-Bengali Muslims are systematically attacking poor people’s quarters and murdering Bengalis and Hindus.”
He and 20 diplomats later sent a famous protest telegram in which he called what was occurring “genocide.” Kissinger responded to Blood’s complaints by dismissing him from his post. “The use of power against seeming odds pays off,” Kissinger observed regarding the crackdown.
The death toll is commonly estimated between at 200,000 and 3 million. Kissinger’s tacit support for the massacres in Bangladesh is one of many incidents contributing to his poor record on human rights."
"In July 1971, Kissinger had already secretly flown from Pakistan to Beijing for the first diplomatic meeting between the United States and Communist China. “Yahya hasn’t had such fun since the last Hindu massacre!” Kissinger remarked."
Wow. It's hard to believe that this is the same Kissinger that's still held in high regard today.
It's really not: the people that hold Kissinger in high regard today (and those that did so then) did so specifically because of things like this, not despite them.
Note, though, that regard for Kissinger is rather mixed; while some hold him in high regard, some think of him as one of America's leading war criminals.
In the quote above, “Yahya hasn’t had such fun since the last Hindu massacre!”, Kissinger seems delight and reveal in about his crimes against humanity. He spent his life chasing the power necessary to perform such crimes and when given such power was happy to use it for hideous purposes.
Kissinger from the Nixon tapes:
“And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union,” he added, “it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”[0]
In one tape Nixon compares the genocide in Bangladesh to the Holocaust, Kissinger goes along with the comparison but argues that the genocide should still be aided[1].
[0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/nyregion/17nyc.html?_r=0
[1]: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/looking-away-from-ge...
Wow, that is just shocking. Originally, I thought he was just another racist like Nixon. But for a Jewish holocaust survivor to make a comment like that... he seems to fit the textbook definition of a psychopath.
If a reader had never heard anything about World War 2 perhaps it wouldn't be the first book to recommend or even number 10. Given the exhaustive pop culture coverage in movies along with endless documentaries and books one would assume reading Human Smoke in context would not leave a reader believing that Hitler was desperately trying to avoid war.
I'm not sure how you regard these as mutually exclusive. Are the events that go into the collection not chosen? Might they not be chosen with an eye toward suggesting conclusions which the one doing the choosing isn't quite bold enough to espouse outright, preferring instead to be able to say "well, that's just your interpretation" in reply to whatever criticism may come?
>I stopped the jeep. Cloth seemed to fall from the bodies, the head was held up by a stick that once might have been a throat. Poles hang from the sides where arms should be, poles are the legs. “What’s your name?” And the man’s eyes cloud and he takes off his hat in anticipation of a blow. “Folek… Folek Sama.” “Don’t take off your hat, you are free now.”
>And as I say it, I look over the camp. I see the huts, I observe the empty faces, the dead eyes. You are free now. I, with my pressed uniform, I have lived in filth and squalor, I haven’t been beaten and kicked. What kind of freedom can I offer? I see my friend enter one of the huts and come out with tears in his eyes. “Don’t go in there. We had to kick them to tell the dead from the living.”
>That is humanity in the 20th century. People reach such a stupor of suffering that life and death, animation or immobility can’t be differentiated any more. And then, who is dead and who is alive, the man whose agonized face stares at me from the cot or Folek Sama, who stands with bowed head and emaciated body? Who was lucky, the man who draws circles in the sand and mumbles “I am free” or the bones that are interred in the hillside?
>Folek Sama, your foot has been crushed so that you can’t run away, your face is 40, your body is ageless, yet all your birth certificate reads is 16. And I stand there with my clean clothes and make a speech to you and your comrades.
>Folek Sama, humanity stands accused in you. I, Joe Smith, human dignity, everybody has failed you. You should be preserved in cement up here on the hillside for future generation[s] to look upon and take stock. Human dignity, objective values have stopped at this barbed wire. What differentiates you and your comrades from animals[?] Why do we in the 20th century countenance you?
>Yet, Folek, you are still human. You stand before me and tears run down your cheek. Hysterical sobbing follows. Go ahead and cry, Folek Sama, because your tears testify to your humanity, because they will be absorbed in this cursed soil, dedicating it.
>As long as conscience exists as a conception in this world you will personify it. Nothing done for you will ever restore you.
>You are eternal in this respect.
That is his own discription[0] that he wrote shortly after being part of a US army group who liberated a concentration camp.
Kissinger lost 13 family members, including his grandmother to the camps.
[0]: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/194615/kissinger-on-liberati...
The difference between the two is that I wouldn't let my engineer part win, but Kissinger would.
The people who consider him a war criminal can't do anything about it. For those that don't, he's a national hero, and will be buried with full honors when his time comes. Sadly, that says a lot about the moral compass of this country.
As a youth I was more conservative. But even then, when I thought I liked him, he was pressed by more liberal students of the local college about covert action in Cambodia, or another contentious issue.
His smug response and style, as in history will remember favorably for my GTD style of realpolitik, even then far more conservative than my current self, found that repulsive and alarming.
I expected that from fellow HSers. But then again I was young and did not realize all politicians in the US are welcomed to act like children.
Coming from German Jewish background, how can he himself not cringe on the effectiveness of genocide comment?
The current crop of those running the country worship him. H. Clinton was on the line to him whenever she needed to figure something out.
If you only take advice from nice people, how can you then understand evil?
Do you believe that because of his failure to accomplish much?
Or do you just disagree with his methods?
What do you mean with "just"? The methods employed to reach a goal can have downsides (side effects) that dwarf the benefits of reaching the goal.
What do you think his goals were? What were the side-effects of his methods? How did the latter detract from the former?
For example, if the goal is American hegemony, and only foreign losses were realized in pursuit of that goal, then it's a clear victory from a policy standpoint. Morality doesn't enter into it.
Why not?
Possibly an even more apt slogan for the gates of an extermination camp than "Arbeit Macht Frei"
Everyone wants to clutch pearls here, and to do so without supporting their positions. This place has gone to shit.
Indian PM Indra Gandhi https://youtu.be/_MATAqeiL-4
Pakistani General and President Y Khan https://youtu.be/v903MselZ3o
I always felt odd that US supported a military government over a democratic one.
The US supports authoritarianism over democracy all the time. Democracy, in the eyes of US foreign policy rhetoric, is only legitimate if the democratically elected government is friendly towards the US and aligned with US interests.
The US has no problems with toppling a democratically elected government in order to install a dictator or puppet leader. It's happened many times, and I imagine it will happen again.
M.A.D. was known on all sides for decades before I was taught about it in the 80s. Nobody who could influence the Big Red Button was at all interested in relinquishing the power that they would lose in the event of an ICBM war.
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Telegram-Gary-J-Bass/dp/0307744...