Frances Abele CM is Distinguished Research Professor and Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy Emerita at Carleton University. She is a research fellow at the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation and the Broadbent Institute. Much of her work focuses on indigenous-Canada relations.
When war erupted in South Asia in 1971, Henry Kissinger called Indians “bastards,” and Richard Nixon said they needed “a mass famine.” For both men, US interests were worth killing hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis and displacing millions more.
By all accounts, the death and destruction Henry Kissinger wreaked upon Cambodia never burdened him. But he bears responsibility for a brutal American bombing campaign and creating the conditions that spurred the Khmer Rouge to power.
Ask anyone over the age of 50 in Cyprus who is to blame for the island’s ongoing divisions, and the answer will be almost unanimous: Henry Kissinger.
Henry Kissinger once said that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in East Timor would have occurred no matter what he did. He was too modest.
In Vietnam, Henry Kissinger had no principles whatsoever. There’s nothing to suggest that he had qualms about people dying or suffering.
Why would Henry Kissinger plan a covert operation in Angola? Because he wanted to exorcize the ghost of Vietnam — and he thought the war would provide a cheap boost to American prestige.
Henry Kissinger was fond of telling Congress that he was in the business of real estate, not social work. Real estate, much like empire, is suited only to thugs and tyrants — as Kissinger’s decades of meddling in the Persian Gulf make clear.
With US policy in war-torn southern Africa perpetually on the verge of capsizing, Henry Kissinger’s desire for stability put him in conflict with the ascendant New Right, which was firmly committed to white minority rule.
Western Sahara, the largest non-self-governing territory in the world, is today bisected by a 1,700-mile-long sand wall and millions of land mines. Henry Kissinger and the Ford administration were undoubtedly proud of their hard work in the region.
With Central America in flames, Henry Kissinger’s challenge was to portray local revolutionary movements as foreign conspiracies more alien than the United States’ own violent interventions. Where democracy failed, capitalism flourished.
In the mid-1970s, fanatical dictatorships viewed South America as the forefront of a third world war in the fight against communism. Henry Kissinger endorsed this crusading spirit — and unlike in Vietnam, he accomplished his objectives there.
By the time Chile’s workers rose up to rally around Salvador Allende, Latin America had become a key arena in US planners’ “mortal struggle to determine the shape of the future world.” Henry Kissinger was obsessed with toppling the socialist president.
“If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly,” Henry Kissinger advised the Argentine regime. In the first three years of the dictatorship, thousands of labor, student, and community activists were killed or disappeared.
Zionism emerged in response to 19th-century European antisemitism — but its aims in Palestine drew upon Western colonial ideologies. To present the current conflict as a timeless feud denies both European responsibility and Palestine’s multiethnic history.
In bringing together sellers and buyers, markets and investors, autocrats and capitalists, Kissinger Associates played an outsize role in the rapid advancement of neoliberalism around the world.
Already mired in scandal, New York City mayor Eric Adams is now pitting workers against each other by stoking resentment toward migrants and pushing new budget cuts. The city’s corporate class is laughing all the way to the bank.
After a 118-day strike, 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members are voting on whether to ratify a new agreement. AI has emerged as the key source of division, with some members unsatisfied that a ban wasn’t on the table.
British Columbia is touting a bill that will protect gig workers from the worst depredations of the sector. However, in a familiar trend of industries outsmarting employment standards in the country, the bill is poised to fall short of its lofty promises.
The number of medications eliminated from many insurance plans has skyrocketed over the last decade, jumping by some 1,600%. Part of the problem lies with pharmacy benefit managers — powerful companies that determine drug benefits for health insurers.
Across the European Union, conservatives and far-right forces are uniting around an anti-immigrant and climate-skeptic agenda. Ahead of June’s EU elections, the continent’s divided left urgently needs to put forward an alternative.