August 2023. The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
2001, Grand Central Publishing, 197 pages. Written in English, read in English.
What is it about Henry Kissinger? The United States has had its share of foreign policy decisions that have labeled it belligerent, malevolent, even evil. There have been many different people — secretaries of state, national security advisors, special envoys, ambassadors, counsels and strategists that have contributed — each in their own way, each with their own agenda — to that depiction of United States in the world. But it is Henry Kissiner, a secretary of state and a national security advisor to only two presidents in the history of the republic, who is one of the most celebrated, and at the same time one of the most reviled, statesmen in its history.
Christopher Hitchens’ book The Trial of Henry Kissinger aims to put some more weight on the revile side of the scale. He provides a case — meticulously constructed to stand some scrutiny in a court of law — of Henry Kissinger’s involvement in, maybe even drive for, multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity. There are wars in multiple locations on the globe, there are political manouevres to aid the undermining of legitimate regimes that were not to his government’s liking, there are attempted political assassinations. Hitchens expresses regret, in the foreword to the book, that Kissinger has not sued him for defamation over the publication. Defamation would require a trial, and in a trial Hitchens can present, in his defense, all of the evidence that he has gathered in order to build his case in this book. A court of law cannot ignore this evidence, and, with some progress made in the definition and handling of international law, and laws related to the responsibility of people to all of humanity, Hitchens’ literary indictment can then become an actual indictment and require Kissinger to stand trial — in real life — for the crimes represented in the book. Crimes that other accomplices have already paid for in their own turn. Kissinger, according to Hitchens, has availed himself to a thin claim of Hitchens being antisemitic, a claim he had to retract, privately, according to Hitchens, when Hitchens himself had filed suit.
On the other hand, other biographers of Kissinger come to his defense following this book and claim that the book has been very thinly researched and is very one-sided in its view. They are right, and Hitchens is right too — the book is not meant to be an even handed inspection of the evidence, a scientific review of all possible angles. It is an imagined trial, as it says on the tin, but only the prosecution part of it. Had it been called The Prosecution of Henry Kissinger it would probably not have had the same effect.
Having said all that, though, where do we stand, as readers? Which side should we take? Should we take a side? Are there sides?
In my opinion, not having the full picture, not ever having the full picture, the book can only stand on the merit of — having not known anything about Henry Kissinger before, except for the general details that everybody knows in a country in which Kissinger was involved in its internal and external affairs — would the reader view him in a more benevolent, or more diabolical light, following the completion of the book? The answer tilts resoundingly towards the diabolical — as Hitchens makes his case very carefully, providing evidence of opportunity, correlation, and to a certain, smaller, extent, even motive. Hitchens ends the book with two appendices, one of which is a reprint of his review of a biography of Kissinger in a newspaper, and Kissinger’s written response to it, and the response of multiple other involved people (Hitchens not being one of them — he adds his response at the end but indicates that he has never sent it) — a small window into the psyche of Kissinger, as viewed from the perspective of Hitchens, to shed some more light on everything that he has presented up until that point.
Will we every know the truth? Will we ever have an unbiased body examine the claims of Hitchens in this book and determine whether there is merit in placing Kissinger on trial, placing accountability on him for the crimes mentioned in the book, providing justice for hundreds of thousands of people across the world? My view of it is that we will never know the truth. Hitchens indicates in the book that Kissinger’s private papers have been donated to the Library of Congress with the distinct requirement that they are unsealed only after Kissinger’s death. Twenty two years after this book has been published, Hitchens is dead, Kissinger is alive, and truth is becoming more and more of a malleable commodity each day. I fear that when the time comes, and these papers are unsealed, nobody would care. And for truth, the most important victim of them all, we will never find anybody culpable.
The September 2023 selection of the David Bowie Book Club will be Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir by Anatole Broyard.
