The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger

by Bhaskar Sunkara (Editor), Rene Rojas (Editor), Jonah Walter (Editor)

"The collection strikes a blackly comic but erudite tone."–Sophia Nguyen, The Washington PostKissinger is dead but his blood-soaked legacy enduresIf 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 American empire through successive rounds of growing pains. For multiple generations of anti-war activists, Kissinger personified the depravity of the American war machine.The world Kissinger wrought is the world we live in, where ideal investment conditions are generated from the barrel of a gun. Today, global capitalism and United States hegemony are underwritten by the most powerful military ever devised. Any political vision worth fighting for must promise an end to the cycle of never-ending wars afflicting the world in the twenty-first century. And breaking that cycle means placing the twin evils of capitalism and imperialism in our crosshairs.In this book, Jacobin follows Kissinger’s fiery trajectory around the world — 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 war-making that still plagues us today.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, War, American History, Essays, International Relations

177 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 2, 2024

Reviews

[Kevin Loza · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a bit too broad and could be about 100 pages longer to go into more detail. I think we can all agree that we are glad Henry Kissinger is dead though.

[redsociety · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another reminder that Anthony Bourdain was right.

[Julian Worker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a wonderful and clever title, largely because of what's not said, you have to work it out for yourself.

This book is a travelogue of all the places that Kissinger changed for the worse, written by experts in their areas, ranging across the globe from Chile to East Timor. No continent was spared Kissinger's deadly embrace and the number of people he was responsible for killing, both directly and indirectly, must be in the millions, even in countries that the United States of America wasn't fighting - this is the true measure of his depravity. Even today, innocent people in Cambodia are killed by unexploded ordnance from the days of the Vietnam war.

[Hira Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

well-written and concise, though in some parts i wish the authors would be a bit more detailed in retelling the history of these countries instead of assuming the reader already knows all of it. i particularly enjoyed the chapter on Angola by Piero Gleijeses. F*CK henry kissinger!!!!

[Lieve · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
A good overview of the shitstain that Kissinger was, but I do wish some of the chapters were more detailed.

For me, the most informative chapters were those on Angola and Pakistan. I didn't know anything about Kissinger's involvement in Africa as a whole, but Angola was particularly fascinating due to the involvement of Cuba. I also hadn't known that Kissinger had his hands in everything that transpired with Pakistan, though I really shouldn't be surprised.

[Joshua Lawrence · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is what I like to call “The Verso Problem”. It is basically wherein it is so esoteric and academic that it isn’t interesting or really comprehensible to anyone who doesn’t have a Master’s degree in the topic, while simultaneously not breaking any new ground to leave those that do have that level of formal education interested.

Skip.

[Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid lil fuck you send off to a real piece of shit

[Breann Hunt · Rating 2 out of 5]

sadly, the best part of this book is the title.

I found the collection of essays to be both incredibly repetitive in their dry structure, yet somehow disjointed and conflicting in their analyses. the arguments were simply not compelling in the slightest— it was like reading a wikipedia article someone tried to gussy up into a legitimate essay.

disappointing!

[felix · Rating 2 out of 5]

dnf and cba to read more; the intro discussing kissinger's ideas and where they stem from is interesting; the rest is just underdeveloped and always remains basic af

[Abdo yousef · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. fuck kissinger

[Michael Howley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I certainly learned a lot from this, but very little about Kissinger himself. It seemed like most of these essays assumed prior knowledge and they did not feel coherently edited across pieces.

[Kate]

Best Spotify Wrapped day ever 2023 🪦

[Brayden Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well the Verdict is in and if you ask me it's a resounding : thank god this piece of garbage finally croaked. Only 100 years too late. Hell's not hot enough for him.

As for the collection of essays, while perhaps not long enough, give you just enough to really resonate with what Anthony Bourdain said about Kissinger. (Go google it) He truly is connected to much of and right in the center of other reasons why the world is such a shit show today. From his foreign interference to his role in championing neoliberalism for decades once he was out of government.

While Kissinger may be dead, what he was apart of remains and those of us who oppose what he stood for certainly have our work cut out for us.

[Reid Eberwein · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dense book full of Kissinger's antics, giving a brief description from around the world of his love of using power for the sake of using power and his disregard for other countries sovereignty if their ideals are not in line with the US. It explores his philosophy of the importance of creative and unexpected responses to crises, and that inaction has to be avoided to show that action is possible.

It surprised me that Kissinger died how he lived, still beloved by the elite and actions defended. His death rid the world of a calculated homicidal manager of American power.

Put in a big shift and read most of it while sitting in a hot tub having a few bevvies so dont ask me too many questions about this one

[Charlie Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars.

Tough luck K-dog, looks like you were a sociopathic bastard. Review soon.

[Maya Hartman · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounding up

[Will Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a snappy invective against Kissinger who certainly rates as a terrible person but it lacks something in its brevity and style which means it doesn't quite work for me. It's neither a pithy take down or a comprehensive demolition, falling somewhere in the middle and not achieving perhaps all of which certainly can be achieved in surveying the wreckage which one of history's quiet monsters left behind him.

[Aly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heard about this book on the day of his passing and had been looking to read it since. A little disappointed that while some essays convincingly demonstrated Kissinger’s hand in the affairs of the region of focus, others failed to dig into his influence to the depth I would’ve appreciated. Some essays were 4+ stars while others were <2 so meeting in the middle with a 3 star rating.

[Brumaire Bodbyl-Mast · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bite sized collection of essays on Kissinger which makes for quick and devastating reading. It’s a shame this book has such a limited run (though, to be fair, left-wing books on Kissinger are hardly ever in drought, this one merely has the novelty of being an “anti-obituary,” though most of it was written before his death) as the essays within offer brief looks at US meddling, some of which the average left wing Amerikan has only vaguely heard about, if at all. Each chapter is maybe 10-20 pages, looking at countries, regions or enterprises which Kissinger had been involved in some horrible atrocity in. Ironically, Kissinger often isn’t the best lens through which to view many of these conflicts- sometimes feeling grafted on to a wider discussion of some issue where he hardly has involvement- though this is understandable, as Kissinger was quite active in a lot of places, even if his activity minimally affected actual outcomes. In someways the essays make his successors and associates (especially Reagan, later the neocons) look more beastial, even if Kissinger was more involved himself in a wider array of crimes than say, Cheney or Rice was. Regardless, the book does show how one figure can help to demonstrate greater machinations of states and capital, and Kissinger’s scaffolded Metternichian Machiavellianism makes him the perfect avatar. Noteworthy especially is his consulting firm, which I was unfamiliar with compared to say, Cheney’s time at Halliburton. There’s some real great selections for the authors - most noteworthy being Grandin (who is cited throughout), Gleijeses and Horne. Overall, a great read for those both familiar with Kissinger and those less antiquated with the rotund wraith.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okayish summary but not much more - I don't know that much about Kissinger's life and career beyond the very basics and yet still I don't really feel like I got all that much out of this book. There's a couple reasons for this. First, there's a consistent absence of facts that ends up making things feel a little inexact and unsatisfyingly inconclusive. Second, likely due to a desire not to "play both sides" (this is fair, no need at all to do that), there is only very brief discussion of Kissinger's justifications of his actions, as well as the reasons why he was able to thrive (this is not so fair - there are super important lessons to be learned from these things and the book only goes into them momentarily and intermittently). Lastly, for me by far the biggest problem was that hardly any portions of the book (except a few quotations from elsewhere) succeeded in capturing the human cost of Kissinger's actions - the pain, suffering, and tragedy of it all. This is really what matters - the devastation exacted upon real lives by one man - not the fact that because of him war x was started, govt y was toppled, and policy z was adopted. A bit of a missed opportunity to nail this guy to the wall and lay bare the cost he imposed on the world. I suspect Verso banked on its banger of a title...

[Benjamin Solidarity · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful and quick overview of a cynically evil monster. Very glad to have something this concise and ready to go so quick after the monster's death so as to better dance on his grave. But I think what was lacking was a greater exploration of the unifying theory of Kissinger's actions and the destructive impact they had on the world. The introduction did an alright job at getting such a unified narrative of his sadism going, but the subsequent chapters didn't really pick it up. I understand this is a factor to the nature of the book, being essentially a collection of essays, but this weakness was a downside

[Umbar · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I liked most about this was that it gave a brief overview of lots of countries that can assign some blame to the US for their destabilisation/coup d'états. What I liked least was how brief the overview was. Probably enjoyed the essay on Cambodia most because I knew most about that from prior reading so I could actually engage with the emotional charge and fill in some blanks where I knew a bit about US involvement. Pretty good emotive read but I was mostly left wondering the extent of US culpability - feel it would've been more powerful to plug those gaps in the text.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the choice to use Kissinger as almost a case story to explore United States hegemony was an excellent idea. However, I found that it was too brief in some part to fully explore some of the key events that Kissinger was involved in.

[Matthew Calvert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This guy suuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked

[Joshua Sisman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title says it all.

The article format is great for giving unique insights, but the overlap in re-explanations gets tiring at some points.

Me and my homies hate Henry Kissinger!

[Megan Corley · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is info everyone should know

[Claudia Hidalgo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sólo digo que the good die young y este tío vivió la friolera de 100 años... además de llamar bitch a Indira Gandhi.
Si yo soy racista, es hacia los imperialistas yankees.

[Graham Oberland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately the authors of this book were so excited by their provocative idea of a book-length anti-obituary that they forgot to write an actually good, persuasive, or cohesive book. To be fair, most of the problems stem from the format: rather than a cohesive book making a larger argument, this is a collection of short essays from academics around the world. It feels like each of them threw together something on short notice about topics that they already write about. The most compelling and comprehensive assessment of Kissinger comes in the preface, which is already available online.

It is a shame, because Kissinger certainly did plenty of things that he can be attacked for. I assume because they wanted to save the "best" for last, the volume concludes with Asia, where Kissinger's long shadow looms darkest and largest. The chapter on Cambodia does come closest to truly capturing the havoc that Kissinger wrought by ordering secret bombings of the country for 8 years that not only devastated it but also brought about the rise of the terrifying Khmer Rouge. But (and this is emblematic of the book's failings as a whole) - the chapter is only eight short pages. The chapter covering Vietnam and China, mystifyingly, is the only one to be presented as an interview rather than an essay. The book would have benefitted from drawing out its arguments in Asia and, to a lesser extent, Latin America and Iraq. If it had spent more time detailing the devastation and human cost of Kissinger's interventions there, it would have been more persuasive. Instead we are left with a firm idea that bad things happened and a vague notion that Kissinger had something to do with it.

Another failing of the book is that it takes it as a given that readers already agree with its far-left politics. In the beginning, it makes the bold claim that "checking Soviet expansionism was hardly an important factor shaping American foreign policy during the Cold War." This is a claim that runs completely contrary to conventional wisdom of anyone who has studied history outside of Marxist circles. The Cold War was primarily about the US and Russia competing with each other around the world - at least that is what we are always told, and that is what I do in fact believe having read reams and reams of primary sources from the Cold War.

I would be very interested in an argument that the Cold War was not, in fact, about that - but this book does not make it. It spends one paragraph loosely justifying it with (also unsubstantiated) claims that the USSR "lacked the will and the capacity to expand beyond its regional satellites." It then says that Stalin wanted to stabilize "socialism in one country" and - in the same sentence - demanded "only a ring of buffer states to protect it from Western invasions." First of all, is it one country or a ring of buffer states? Even this one sentence is internally contradictory. Beyond that, this is another extremely outlandish claim that I would love to read the case for, but they just take it as a given. I guess the USSR had to roll tanks into Prague just to defend against the West? Maybe, but we'll never know - at least not from this book. After this one paragraph, it moves on entirely from this paradigm-shaking historical claim. I am dwelling on this paragraph because it is emblematic of the book's larger failure to persuade, written as it is for an echo chamber of leftist academics who already agree with its fundamental enmity towards capitalism and America.

The book also fails to deal with the big picture. Was the American victory in the Cold War good or bad? Did Kissinger help or hurt that cause? What about the opening to China? Did that help or hurt, and did Kissinger's role in the Vietnam disaster outweigh any positives there? These are fascinating questions and I would love to hear the author's opinions, but we never will because they are never addressed.

My final big-picture critique is that the book is schizophrenic about how American influence should be used. In many cases, it criticizes (often rightly) Kissinger for using American power to intervene against popular uprisings. In others, however, it takes issue with Kissinger for NOT using American power to intervene when entities that the authors don't like took power. They don't seem to have too much of an issue with US imperialism - just US imperialism that they don't like. See my country-specific notes below for some examples.

Henry Kissinger left behind a voluminous output of writings on his own life and history. This book will not be enough to stand against that onslaught, though standing against that onslaught is a necessary job. I wish the book would have used more of Kissinger's own words against him, pulling from his many writings and contrasting them with his actions, if that is possible. Alas, we will have to wait for someone else to do that.

Notes on specific countries where the book made a persuasive case:
- Chile, where Kissinger actively supported the coup that brought Pinochet to power and thus killed hundreds and terrorized thousands more
- Iraq, where Kissinger cynically supported the Kurds and then abandoned them only to support Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party (and we all know how that turned out)
- Cambodia, where the book did the best job of painting the human cost of what was probably Kissinger's worst handiwork. But as noted above, the book could have done much more here and on Vietnam

Notes on specific countries where the book did not make a persuasive case:
- Angola, where the book says the Soviets "behaved with restraint" and as a result Kissinger was wrong to see the country as a theater against Moscow, without providing any evidence. They also frame Cuba acting alone as somehow an argument that the USSR was not involved, despite the fact that the USSR and Cuba were clearly allies at the time
- Cyprus - this is the most egregious example of the book blaming Kissinger for NOT exercising US imperialism
- South Africa, where I was completely ready for a persuasive case that Kissinger propped up apartheid. Instead, all the actual Kissinger quotes are about how he opposes it. The book claims he didn't mean what he said, but provides no evidence of that. Instead the strongest strike against him is that a Rhodesian leader's spouseonce said that they had Scottish ancestry in common, and that LBj was incestred in his possible South African ancestry. This chapter was honestly bewildering.

I came into this book ready to be blown away by depths of malevolence or incompetence on Kissinger's part that I did not know about. I cannot emphasize enough how primed I was to like this book. Unfortunately, it failed to make the case or teach me much that I did not already know, and possibly sparked a bit of internal backlash due to how poorly it defended its most provocative claims.

[Owen Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not what I expected it to be, and not, I would argue, what it had originally claimed to be. It is not inherently bad, but I think it ultimately fails to serve as a true indictment of Henry Kissinger.

One of the bigger problems I have with this book is the format of providing distinct essays related to geographical areas, most if not all of which fail to condense background information and provide good timelines in a succinct enough way to actually emphasize Kissinger’s influence in the region.

There is a disjointedness present here that I think is natural to come from a series of essays written by so many authors, but a strange quirk of that fact also means a lot of ground gets recovered, and some does not get covered nearly as much. Almost as if they had agreed to split up the work evenly, but then did not discuss who was responsible for what.

It’s not a bad book, the chapter on Cambodia was especially well written. In honesty if the entire book had been written as the chapter on Cambodia, it would be a much better read.

I had been anticipating reading this for a while, so it is hard to say I wasn’t disappointed, but it’s not a poor experience either. You could probably use this book like a Wikipedia article - it gives a cursory overview that isn’t satisfying, but gives you something new to type in the search bar. The reference texts are more important than the compiled document.

[Nakedfartbarfer · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I read this book, I’m reminded of how when Christopher Hitchens came out in support of the Iraq war, he became an instant darling of the neocon right largely because he was one of the few hawks who could speak in diagrammable sentences. Hitchens set about coming up with flowery rationalizations for the the ruling class’ blood-soaked id, repeatedly doubling down to the point where he ultimately agreed to be waterboarded to prove that waterboarding wasn’t torture and promptly uttered his safe word after about ten seconds. It’s on YouTube.
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Unlike Hitchens, Kissinger lacks the vocabulary alone to lend lofty credence to the destruction of sovereign nations and instead reaches for a mishmash of narrowly-read philosophy by putting random bellicose addenda to Kantian excerpts and such. This was, for the ruling class around him, a plausible illusion of statesmanship and provided enough ideological cover to defoliate Vietnam.
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This is the playbook of semi-literate political charlatans- using semantic complications to dress-up ancient, repressive credos as new concepts and to launder the rapacious impulses of corporate capital and central banks. Along with bad-faith humanitarian concerns that equated left-wing resistance movements with the murderous regimes they opposed, this is used throughout the 20th century to rationalize the bloody overthrow of every left-of-center elected government in South and Central America, Indochina, and beyond.
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As this book points out, it’s useless to read Kissinger’s written obfuscations & pretensions or his explanations for his actions. An analysis of Kissinger’s statements, correspondence and written output yields no persuasive insights to his cause, because, like the American Empire, he holds no ideology beyond the brutal triumph of capital. I feel like I’m trying to analyze one of those pictures that simulate an occipital lobe stroke; everything should presumably be legible to human beings, but doesn’t make sense in the physical universe that we occupy.
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The book describes his swathe of desolation and lays bare how Henry Kissinger is the incarnate flesh of the hollow, grasping capitalist consortia. He is professionally canonized for his facilitation of, and ersatz profundities in justification for, the evergreen capitalist theft and domination of land & resources. Kissinger is the ultimate lickspittle for capitalism, surrounded by lickspittles: the introduction details how, at Kissinger’s ninetieth birthday (surrounded by other ruthless nihilists on both sides of the aisle), John McCain toasted Kissinger and actually thanked him for the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War: where John McCain spent five years as a POW. Had this toast come from anyone who wasn’t an empty, dusky-eyed career-man with presidential aspirations, it would read as savagely ironic to thank Kissinger for Vietnam, but coming from someone who has made the necessary moral compromises to become a US Senator [seeking an arrangement with capital], it is in fact the slobbering, simpering encomium of an unblushing sycophant to almighty empire.