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KISSINGER PRAGMATISM OR PROFIT? [1]
['Richard Cohen', 'Columnist Focusing On Politics', 'August', 'Richard Cohen Wrote A Weekly Political Column For The Washington Post Until September']
Date: 1989-08-29
Will someone please ask Henry Kissinger the "C" question. It goes like this: "Dr. Kissinger, do you have a financial stake in the issues you discuss on television or in your newspaper column? Is one of your corporate clients seeking to do business in a country under discussion? If that country changed governments, would that affect your access to its officials? "C" stands for Conflict -- as in conflict of interest. It could also stand for Cash, since Kissinger gets a lot of that from corporations that hire his firm, Henry Kissinger and Associates, as consultants. The firm's role, we are given to understand, is to offer advice and to open doors. These doors are a lot easier for Kissinger to open if he happens to know government leaders or if he refrains, as is the case with China, from calling them a collection of murderous thugs. China -- yet another "C" word -- is a case in point. Kissinger has frequently commented on events there and recently devoted his newspaper column to the economic sanctions Congress imposed on Beijing. He condemned the sanctions, characterizing the Tiananmen Square massacres as purely a domestic matter. Sure, the regime's "brutality was shocking," Kissinger wrote, but "no government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators. By "no government" Kissinger is presumably including Britain, the United States, Sweden and even Liechtenstein -- a preposterous statement, but one that makes us grateful that Richard Nixon, not Kissinger, was president during the student demonstrations of the 1970s. This sort of amorality, what Kissinger fans call pragmatism, is nothing new for Kissinger, especially where China is concerned. As President Nixon's national security adviser, he helped design the so-called "tilt" toward Pakistan during its war with India. He did so not because Pakistan was in the right (it wasn't) but because it was being instrumental in arranging Nixon's 1972 trip to China. Kissinger has always been a little soft on China. So Kissinger's recent foreign policy pronouncements are hardly inconsistent with his long-held views. But those views seem dated. The so-called China card could only be played against the Soviet Union. But Russia has folded its cards and pretty much left the table. To insist that China retains its old importance vis-a`-vis the Soviet Union ("China remains too important for America's national security," Kissinger wrote) is charmingly loyal if not nostalgic but hardly makes a lot of sense anymore. But is there another reason? Frankly, I don't know. Kissinger and Associates could teach the KGB a thing or two about secrecy. When I called to ask if Kissinger had clients who do business in China or were attempting to, I was told that such information is not public. When I asked if Kissinger had been to China in the last year, I was told ... You guessed it. Put my requests in writing, I was instructed, and -- maybe -- someone would get back to me. So, okay. Here's my request -- in writing. Does Henry Kissinger have a conflict of interest? Rather than being amoral (okay, pragmatic) is he, instead, defending the status quo -- the people and governments he knows? These questions are important because Kissinger's is the most authoritative non-governmental voice on foreign policy. When Kissinger talks, everyone -- including the White House -- listens. And does he talk. A recent survey showed that Kissinger (along with his one-time deputy, Alexander Haig) appeared on Nightline more often than anyone else. On neither that show nor any other (NBC's Today, for instance) do I recall him being asked if he had business dealing with any of the governments being discussed -- and a Nightline producer said she could recall no such question either. It seems the question just doesn't come up. But why not? After all, Kissinger makes enormous amounts of money as a consultant. We can glean just how much from the $900,000 pay package (including severance) disclosed by Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger when he left the Kissinger firm to join the State Department. We can only assume Kissinger made more -- a lot more. Eagleburger also provided the Senate with a list of his (not Kissinger's) clients. They included Union Carbide, Fiat, Volvo, Midland Bank, Coca Cola, H.J. Heinz, ITT and Hunt Oil -- firms with operations all over the world. For the past several months, Washington has been in an ethics frenzy. Not even the press has been exempted, and journalists have been asked where they get their money -- speaking fees, for example. Why Kissinger, the newspaper columnist, or Kissinger, the talk-show guest, should be exempted from such scrutiny is beyond me. So let's ask the "C" question about China: Is Kissinger's position on U.S.-China policy a disinterested analysis of the facts or the result of a financial interest in the outcome? We await the rumbling reply.
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[1] Url:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1989/08/29/kissinger-pragmatism-or-profit/717e4658-6fed-4a92-8ce5-0c8c2036fe2d/
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