(C) Common Dreams
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The Bad Thing Henry Kissinger Did That You Don’t Even Know About [1]
['Matthew Duss', 'Alex Shephard', 'Prem Thakker', 'Casey Michel', 'Jim Sleeper', 'Tori Otten']
Date: 2023-06-01
The Washington foreign policy consensus toward China has radically shifted over the past few years, but for decades Kissinger was at the forefront of the effort to open China to U.S. business interests, using his status as elder statesman to downplay concerns about the Chinese government’s human rights abuses or unfair trade practices that could have created inconvenient pressure for those business interests. It’s hard to believe that Kissinger wasn’t shading his public statements or his private advice to administrations that continued to seek it in ways that benefited his clients, but that’s the point: We really shouldn’t have to wonder.
It’s worth remembering that, upon being named as head of the 9/11 Commission by President George W. Bush in 2002, Kissinger faced serious questions from families of 9/11 victims over potential conflicts of interests posed by financial relationships with governments that could be implicated in the commission’s work. Kissinger eventually resigned from the commission rather than publicly disclose his clients. The 9/11 investigation provided a particularly harsh spotlight, but the fact is that these same questions could reasonably be asked of every administration official with these kinds of business relationships.
The uncomfortable truth is Biden administration’s foreign policy team includes numerous people with these potential conflicts. It gives me no pleasure to point this out. I know a lot of these folks. I consider some of them good friends. They are skilled and well-intentioned public servants. But we must recognize that the cozy relationships between corporate interests and former and future foreign policymakers, and the very legitimate questions those relationships raise about whose interests are really being looked after, is a problem for our foreign policy.
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[1] Url:
https://newrepublic.com/article/173074/henry-kissi...
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