If the American foreign policy establishment is a grand citadel, then Henry Kissinger is the ghoul haunting its hallways. For half a century, he was an omnipresent figure in war rooms and at press briefings, dutifully shepherding the US empire through military interventions and underhand foreign policy. For generations of antiwar activists, Kissinger personified the depravity of the American war machine.

The world Kissinger wrought is the one we live in today, where ideal investment conditions are generated from the barrel of a gun. Today, global capitalism and US hegemony are underwritten by the most powerful military ever devised. Any political vision worth fighting for must promise an end to the long-running cycle of wars rolling through the twenty-first century. Breaking that cycle means placing the twin evils of capitalism and imperialism in our crosshairs.

In this edited collection, Jacobin follows Kissinger’s trajectory across the globe, across Central and South America, Africa and the Middle East, Europe and Southeast Asia — not because he was evil incarnate, but because he, more than any other public figure, illustrates the links between capitalism, empire, and the feedback loop of endless conflict that plagues us today.