The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger, edited by Rene Rojas, Bhaskar Sunkara and Jonah Walters

Look, I’m no big fan of war and violence and cruelty and indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets.

I’m not a person who loves the idea of democratically elected Socialist governments being overthrown in violent coups…

I’m not the kinda blogger who gets off on the idea of explicitly racist governments sending their racist armies off on proxy wars in neighbouring countries, and I’m not here to praise the actions of disintegrating armies and countries using civilian abuse, sexual assault and constant killing as a political weapon.

I’m not Henry Kissinger: I don’t think these things, these acts, are justified by their ends, which was the United States’ militaristic, economic and political global hegemony over the second half of the 20th century and (it’s got fuzzy since 2008) at least some of this century…

I’m not advocating for any of those things that the personal and political allies of Henry Kissinger did all over the world.

And I’m not a fan, either, of those ends.

I (old, bald, scott manley hadley) think – as I imagine do the majority of the people reading Verso Books’ rushed – but beautifully titled – slim primer on the acts of Henry Kissinger, The Good Die Young – that the capitalistic status quo that we are currently trapped within is a self-destructive dead fucking end, as it continues to normalise gross inequality (of food, of power, of access to medicine, of education, of leisure time, of safety), structural racism, enforced starvation, cruel border maintenance, perpetual war and all of the other hypershit things that we all labour beneath…

I’m not for this. Like, it’s not my thing! I don’t like. it!

But there was nothing Henry Kissinger liked more than the status quo, than capitalism, the capitalist system, the idea of American exceptionalism, and the use of violence against anyone – anyone, anything, anywhere – that threatened – or was perceived to have threatened – that sick, corrupt, morally indefensible, status quo…

This book, then, edited by Rene Rojas, Bhaskar Sunkara and Jonah Walters, is a project that has been worked on (off and on) for several years…

It is a political compilation, a collection of essays on Kissinger and his actions, legacies and ideas.

Things are ordered in sections by geographical region, rather than by chronology (though there does tend to be a chronological ordering in each section, but even this is inconsistent), and though this is frustrating to a casual reader at the outset, it quickly becomes apparent that there is a clear reason for this: many of these conflicts, scandals, hot wars, cold wars, proxy wars, assassinations, massacres, bombing campaigns, revolutions, coups, etc were happening simultaneously. The 70s, man. What a time to be alive.

–///–

Going into this book, I didn’t know a lot about Henry Kissinger.

Boomers who were left wing in their youth and remain proud that they voted for a “left wing” party one time in the nineties hate him, and people who don’t see the humanity of individuals who aren’t part of the majority lighter skinned countries in NATO love him, but for the rest of us, he’s almost a mythical figure from recent history..

A bad guy, certainly, an amoral figure who didn’t give a shit about right or wrong (didn’t even acknowledge the existence of right or wrong) and demanded, encouraged and normalised gross acts of violence against civilian populations backed by the international capitalist hegemony.

Kissinger was a person with legitimate claim to having set the tone of the second half of the twentieth century, as a political academic brought into government circles as an “intellectual”, an “ideas man”, his professional history – and the embrace of him as a figure by almost all mainstream American politicians of the last few decades – speaks to his efficacy and his success in what he set out to do.

He may not have had any ethics or any morality, but he exuded a clear set of values: America first, at all costs, and everyone else not even second, but non-existent.

–///–

Does the military industrial complex still stand?

Is American economic and cultural dominance of the world still extant?

You could argue that, since the aforementioned financial crisis of 2008 (remember that? 🤪), America’s position has shifted, and as we revert to a multi-polar world with Chinese (and Russian?) spheres of influence increasing in geopolitical importance (especially thanks to the Belt and Road Initiative – America still seems to prefer handing out military aid, rather than infrastructure, to its allies (trapped into a cycle of violence as the answer, violence as the only act)), so a possible coda at Kissinger’s death is that, ultimately, he and his project failed(?), but I don’t think this is necessarily comforting and I don’t think this is necessarily true!

Are we, as a species, as a global population, safer, freer, happier, more equitable, more peaceful?

No, we’re fucking not, are we?

So maybe the people who don’t want a better future are the ones who won?

–///–

This book contains lots of essays, most around ten pages, some very explicitly focused on Kissinger’s personal involvement in a particular moment/conflict/incident, while others deal more generally with the behaviour/decisions of American foreign policy while he was the relevant Secretary of State.

And although there is detail and data and information in each essay, all of them feel more like a summary of a different text, an introduction to a fuller book.

I think, then, that while it’s fair to say there is certainly lots of interesting content here and a catalogue of complicity in crimes against humanity (a charge one imagines Kissinger would deny the validity of), it feels more like a set of prose trailers for full-length prose features.

Of course, one cannot explore the full of extent of a complex geopolitical situation in a handful of pages, but I found that some of the pieces here presumed a lot more specific knowledge than I had, while others summarised information I would consider presumed knowledge for anyone with any interest in recent(ish) politics…

It’s not a tasting menu as per a luxurious dinner experience where every course is full and phenomenal and unforgettable, it is rather a tasting like you might get in a fancy supermarket or a large farmer’s market (here’s a bite of this, here’s a bite of that, here’s a shot of vinegar, here’s a fingernail-sized piece of cheese, here’s a dog treat made from the dried penis of slaughtered chickens etc)…

There’s no meal here, no matter how hard you want there to be, but that doesn’t mean the little bitty bites aren’t good?

Will I read a longer book on a particular episode/escapade of Henry Kissinger’s career? Maybe at some point, yeah. But this week, this month? No way.

An interesting book, certainly, but in no way is it exhaustive and, for this reason, it doesn’t quite satisfy (or didn’t satisfy me, an idiot and a fool, let’s not forget), though I would say that The Good Die Young is likely to be a text worth reading for its overview of the dangerous career of a dangerous man and the dangerous country he dangerously worked for…

Yes, it’s summaries, but important nonetheless. And in a fractured, high speed, nonstop horrorworld, who has time enough for anything real???

Order direct from Verso here.