Henry Kissinger never quite belonged where he wanted to be
Early in june 1970, soon after America had invaded Cambodia, Henry Kissinger secretly visited Brian McDonnell, a 27-year-old peacenik he had spotted in Lafayette Park opposite the White House. It was one of his many efforts that year to persuade his younger critics that they should give war a chance.
As with so many others, he failed with Brian, but they stayed in touch. While Richard Nixon sulked in the West Wing, his national security adviser and the long-haired activist would meet from time to time to talk about the war and the philosophy of Kant, struggling, Mr Kissinger wrote, “to fashion at least a temporary bridge across the mutual incomprehension”. He never lost the belief that he could win over his critics. And not just the movers and shakers, but also those far from the cover of Time and out of range of the Oval Office microphones. By arguing and arguing some more, he was asserting that he belonged and that he counted.
He had started as an outcast, growing up in pre-war Germany among people who despised and rejected him for being a Jew. The Nazis sacked his father from the public high school in Fürth, near Nuremberg. His mother was the first to grasp that the “Hitler State” held no future for her children. In 1938, 15-year-old Heinz, as he was then, fled to America with his family. He never shed the accent; his voice, like gravel in a goldfish-bowl, added deeply to his seriousness. But his younger brother Walter learned to speak like a regular American, claiming later to be “the Kissinger who listens”.
2023-11-30 05:48:25
Original from www.economist.com
