Should
Henry Kissinger
be Tried for War Crimes?
By JONATHAN
POWER
February 28, 2001
LONDON - Someone, somewhere had to say it and confirm
what the Pentagon always feared would happen if an
international war crimes court were established: that the
U.S. harboured war criminals of its own and they had
served not that long ago at the apex of power in the
American government. Last Saturday the renowned
journalist, Christopher Hitchens, did just that in an
extract from his forthcoming book, "The Trial of Henry
Kissinger" published in the London newspaper, The
Guardian.
Kissinger, who served as President Richard Nixon's
National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, has
long known that there is a cottage industry of
researchers, journalists, lawyers and academics out to
destroy his formidable reputation. For years he has kept
them at bay, even if at times he has come near to being
nailed, as with William Shawcross' formidable book,
"Sideshow", which alleged that with the bombing campaign
he unleashed on Cambodia he effectively destroyed an
almost innocent bystander of the Vietnam war. Kissinger,
who became a media star during Nixon's term of office
with his unique combination of intellectual prowess,
hide-toughened realpolitik and an unflinching ability to
successfully woo any glamorous film star that crossed his
path, has managed while out of power to remain a darling
of the movers and shakers in American high society. The
bullets that would fell a lesser man appear to simply
bounce off him and he remains courted by business,
politicians, journalists and society hostesses whose
presence, they believe, will add yeast, or rather a
frisson- the authentic touch of raw and unapologetic
power- to any occasion you care to name.
I can be no judge of Hitchen's charges on Cambodia,
Cyprus and East Timor but I can say that on Chile where I
have just completed my own researches for a
soon-to-be-published book ("Like Water on Stone",
Penguin, May, 2001) he is accurate down to the last
comma. Chile was unique in Latin America with an almost
unbroken continuous democracy since independence in 1818.
But in the presidential election of 1970 a Marxist
socialist, Salvador Allende, surprised Washington by
winning 36.2% of the vote in the first round. The CIA in
a formal Intelligence Memorandum observed that the U.S.
"has no vital interests with Chile- an Allende victory
would not pose any likely threat to the peace of the
region". But Nixon and Kissinger hit the roof. Kissinger
was minuted as saying: "I don't see why we need to stand
by and watch a country go Communist due to the
irresponsibility of its own people." A couple of weeks
later Nixon, with Kissinger's ardent approval, gave
Richard Helms the widest possible authority ("a marshal's
baton, Helms later called it) to prevent Allende's
presidency by any means available.
Although the U.S. ambassador to Chile came to
Washington and strongly argued to Kissinger and Nixon
that a military coup would not be in the best interests
of Chile, and although Kissinger later claimed he called
off the CIA operation, Chile's chief of staff, General
Rene Schneider, who was known to be strongly opposed to a
coup, was duly murdered. The assassins were the very
conspirators the CIA had funded earlier. Washington
followed this with a severe economic squeeze that gave
General Augusto Pinochet his opening. On September 11th,
1973 Pinochet ordered the bombing of Allende in the
presidential palace and immediately ordered the arrest
and torture of thousands of Allende supporters. Two years
later, after Amnesty International had widely publicised
the ongoing torture of suspected dissidents, Kissinger,
in a conversation with Patricio Carvajal, Pinochet's
foreign minister, said "I hold the strong view that human
rights is not appropriate for discussion in a foreign
policy context".
Thus the man who, along with Nixon, had made the
illicit coup possible turned his back on the
consequences.
After Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998, the
ruling by Britain's highest court, the House of Lords,
crystallised half a century's debate on the legal and
political problems of accountability for crimes against
humanity. For the first time in a high court anywhere it
was decided that sovereign immunity must not be allowed
to become sovereign impunity. For that we have to thank
most of the nations of the world, including the U.S. of
Ronald Reagan and the Britain of Margaret Thatcher who
put their signatures to the UN Convention Against Torture
and thus laid the legal basis for the British ruling.
Now, since the vote in Rome in the summer of 1998
approving the statute creating the International Criminal
Court, the means will soon be available to try people who
are accused of all crimes against humanity, not just
torture. Fortunately for Kissinger it cannot deal
retroactively and is doubtful if the Convention Against
Torture can be used as a basis for prosecuting a person
once removed.
Still if the discussion now afoot gives Kissinger
himself something of a frisson it will not be in vain.
Society should have other means of punishing this man and
one way would be to take him off the pedestal on which he
now stands. This man should be scorned not feted. It is
time overdue that western high society stopped courting a
man who, for all his intellectual bravado, is arguably
nothing more than a common war criminal.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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