Kissinger in Vietnam and China
In Vietnam, Henry Kissinger had no principles whatsoever. There’s nothing to suggest that he had qualms about people dying or suffering.
Henry Kissinger (left) meets with South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu (right) in August 1972. (Bettmann via Flickr)
Jonah Walters
Kissinger took his first official government job in 1969, as Richard Nixon’s national security advisor. What kind of administration was he sliding into?
Carolyn Eisenberg
The war in Vietnam was the most prominent issue at the time. There was a lot of pressure on Nixon — who claimed to have a secret plan for ending the war, but didn’t want to tell anyone what it was — to find some kind of resolution on that issue. So he was walking into an administration which was immediately consumed by the war.
It’s relevant to note that Kissinger didn’t have any governing experience at that point. He had consulted for different administrations — he had even been a consultant for peace talks in Vietnam — but he had very little idea how the government really functioned. In that one respect, it was similar to the situation with the Trump people in 2016. As far as Kissinger was concerned, the actual practice of government was not a field he paid much attention to.
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