Irish Examiner view: When Henry Kissinger came to Cork

The acrimony and ambivalence which accompanied much of the coverage of the centenary of Henry Kissinger is a reminder of the continuing and increasing divisions over the legacy of the man who was once the world’s most recognisable globetrotting diplomat.

Many countries, particularly in Africa, view his contribution as baleful and a significant factor in extending the rule of apartheid, to a point where South Africans now lament the fact that Nelson Mandela was released at least five years too late, and that the consequential limits on his vigour and reconciliatory powers led directly to the chaos which now threatens to overwhelm the continent’s most influential country economically and politically.

Critics point to his influence over president Richard Nixon in extending the Vietnam War across the borders of Laos and Cambodia, encouraging the 1973 Chilean coup which replaced Salvador Allende with Augusto Pinochet, and turning a blind eye to genocides in Pakistan and East Timor. 

His scorn of women (“nothing more than a pastime”) jars with modern thinking and good taste. It is unlikely that his reputation is going to grow as history advances, notwithstanding his joint 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for extracting the US from 20 years of ever-escalating involvement in Southeast Asia.

Long-time readers of the Irish Examiner will remember when Kissinger, then a mere 79, came to Cork to speak at a business conference at UCC and to attend a dinner arranged by Thomas Crosbie Holdings, then owners of the Examiner.

He polarised opinions, telling this newspaper that he had “tried to contribute to the peace of the world”. On the page opposite, regular columnist and historian Ryle Dwyer had a different perspective, arguing that Tánaiste Mary Harney and the Cork business community disgraced the Irish people by feting Kissinger at the university. 

“This disgraced agent of a disgraced president should be in the Hague in the dock, like Slobodan Milosevic,” he wrote, referring to the Serbian president who initiated ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

Powerful stuff, which was not to the liking of Kissinger, or the then-owners of this newspaper. Despite an explanation that the Irish Examiner traditionally allows latitude to columnists to express opinions as long as they remain within the laws of the land, the visitor was not mollified, using the analogy that it was bad manners to invite someone to dinner and proceed to insult them. 

Things had been taken “out of context”, he said. “They are fundamentally beneath contempt.”

Protesting students turned up at UCC the next day chanting “The Hague, not the Boole”. But Kissinger was not without his supporters in Ireland, with one columnist in Dublin declaring that he brought a brain to be picked and not nit-picked.

 “You know how it is in Cork, ” his article commenced. “You invite a distinguished guest around to your house and then you call him a bollix.”

While Kissinger is still lionised in the US, the emergence of time-delayed official documents casts an ever-increasing shadow over his tenure as the world’s dealmaker, following in the traditions of Metternich and Talleyrand. His version of “realpolitik” would encompass doing unpleasant things with unpleasant people. 

That may be why he suggests that China’s involvement offers the best hope of establishing peace talks over Ukraine. And that Nato must protect Kyiv’s new borders in the future.