Hillary Clinton has long invoked Henry Kissinger as a mentor — her infamous emails show that they corresponded with some frequency when she was secretary of state. But using her connection to one of US politics’ elder statesmen to signal her power may be alienating more potential voters than it’s attracting.



She mentioned Kissinger during one recent Democratic debate, and rival Bernie Sanders brought up her apparent fondness for him at the last one, on Thursday night. “I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country”, he said, to massive applause.

His use of “destructive” alludes to the fact that many consider Kissinger a war criminal, most famously Christopher Hitchens, who, in a lengthy two-part article for Harper’s in 2001 (later expanded into the book and documentary, The Trial of Henry Kissinger), laid out his case that Kissinger should be brought up on charges “for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture”.

Among Kissinger’s numerous offenses: as national security adviser, and later secretary of state to both presidents Nixon and Ford, Kissinger’s foreign policy views often held sway, from his backing of “Operation Menu”, the covert bombing campaign in Laos and Cambodia in 1969-70, to the disastrous attack on the Khmer Rouge in 1975 in the wake of the Mayaguez incident. As part of the CIA’s larger plan to destabilize the Allende government in Chile, Hitchens argued that Kissinger was behind the kidnapping of Chilean general René Schneider, who was ultimately killed by his captors. Schneider’s family even sued Kissinger for the murder, but to no avail.

This is the man that Hillary Clinton values for his “belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order”?

The problem with Henry Kissinger is that you can’t consider the bad without at least acknowledging the good: he negotiated the end to the Vietnam war and was controversially awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1973. No matter what your opinion of US jobs lost to cheap Chinese manufacturing, the “opening” of China to the west – of which Kissinger was an integral part – is generally considered a positive moment in American history. Likewise, Kissinger’s commitment to détente with the Soviet Union surely helped foster the end of the cold war.

It isn’t hard to see why Secretary Clinton valued his input; she is the heir to the sort of realpolitik (“realistic politics”) that made Kissinger famous. Clinton asserts that she’s the only candidate that, once in office, will actually get things done. The problem with this modern sense of realpolitik is that the word has become shorthand for “the ends justify the means”. It’s telling that the term can be applied to a diplomat like Kissinger, as well as to America’s Founding Father, George Washington (whose motto was “Exitus Acta Probat” or “the outcome justifies the deed”), as well as to a brutal dictator like Joseph Stalin.

The question is: will accomplishing Clinton’s goals by any means necessary gain her any supporters? Will it gain her the presidency? Can invoking realpolitik help her – or will voters realize she could be the next Henry Kissinger, and thus turn to Bernie Sanders’s idealism instead?

“I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend,” Sanders said on Thursday night. It was a line that ranks up there with Lloyd Bentsen’s famous quip “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy,” from the 1988 vice-presidential debate against Dan Quayle. While Senator Bentsen’s line drew thunderous applause and underlined Quayle’s inexperience, in the end it made no difference. George HW Bush and Quayle trounced the Dukakis/Bentsen ticket in the general election. It was a memorable line, but little more.

Will Sanders’ forceful takedown of Clinton and Kissinger do him any good? Kissinger has remade himself as an elder statesman: will his actions from nearly 50 years ago have enough currency to derail Clinton? Interestingly, the German thinker Ludwig von Rochau, who coined the term realpolitik in the 19th century, wrote that “when it is a matter of trying to bring down the walls of Jericho, the Realpolitik thinks that lacking better tools, the most simple pickaxe is more effective than the sound of the most powerful trumpets”. That sentiment seems a lot more in line with the grassroots momentum of the Sanders campaign than the top-down machiavellianism of Henry Kissinger.

For Kissinger not to become an albatross around Clinton’s neck, she needs to win in the upcoming primary in South Carolina and caucuses in Nevada; to do that, she needs to embrace a more Washingtonian idea of the ends justifying the means. Washington both shrewdly led the breakaway colonies in war and the fledgling democracy in peace, balancing the keen-eyed observance of a military strategist with a true politician’s ability to bring together the young nation’s rival factions for the greater good. Surely that’s a better model than looking to a Republican war criminal for advice.