the, the the, you know, deal, i'm tempted to say that we've had a, a really long day. very important and a test conversation of the china. my neck was a little bit steph value, our conversation is perma that you understand each other clearly leader to leader. all right, that's gonna do it for me for now, but they're still with us. my colleague union o'neill is in next in about half an hour with much more news by the the hello, i'm

a noah chan. you are tuned into modus operandi and repented and unapologetic centenary and statesman henry kissinger, died at his home on november 29th, 2023, his name forever ashton, to the history books all around the world. for better or worse, henry kissinger was arguably america's most influential diplomat. this week we'll take a look back at this historical figure and the policies he implemented that shape the world as we know it today. all right, let's get into the m o, the hitting that 100 birthday is a celebratory milestone. few ever seen. but for a heinz alford kissinger. better known as henry. it was a birthday mocked by cynics all over the internet. love him or hate them. henry

kissinger left an indelible mark on the world warning bavaria to a jewish family. in 1923, his family fled nazi germany in 1938 for the united states. as a naturalized citizen, young henry joined the us military fodder world war 2 and later became an academic at harvard university, completing everything from undergrad through his ph. d. there in the early 19 fifties, he took his 1st job and government back in 1951 while he was completing his master's program. and it would seem never to leave. and he's played a role in every us administration ever since both officially and unofficially advising everyone from nelson rockefeller to hillary clinton. he even perhaps with tragic irony to comb the 1973 nobel peace prize. despite his expansion of the vietnam war, henry kissinger shaped the world across 2 centuries,

the back half of the 20th and the 1st quarter of the 21st. passengers, policies and actions are so wide, reaching that historians are still learning about all of it today. all right, joining us to reflect on kissinger as policies and legacies, will bring in an expert in the field. peter cruz, eric is a renowned professor of history at american university, author of a number of books and contributed to the fantastic doctor series called me and told history of the united states directed by oliver stone professor goose neck. always fascinating conversation with you who's better to discuss this topic venue. thank you for being with us. thank you for having me. so professor henry kissinger has a complicated and complex legacy to put it mildly and the father of real politics. as many credit him even calling him perhaps original maga,

maybe even an opportunist at a 100 years old. it's safe to say he was among some of the last of, of that and generations. diplomats 1st your top line thoughts on his passing and his legacy. it's interesting. the way the discussion of kissinger's life has been going in the media since is passing. there is some root canal. busy of him, a brilliant statesman, a scholar of visionary thinker, here, and there are many to consider him to be a work criminal, a man with a massive amount of blood on his hands. i put myself in the 2nd category. i think cag kissinger. kissinger betrayed everything. that was good about the american ideal kissinger saw a power exercise power. it was ruthless dots. it would stand in

his way. and at a personal level, there was something almost nauseating about him where he would condemn next in public late by form. all over him privately, and he understood what richard dixon was. but yet he sucked up to him in ways that were really embarrassing humiliating. yep. people see him is this great statesman. and in fact, of the 19 seventy's, it's hard to believe he was even considered a sex symbol. it was bathing all these starlets right. it, you know, and he was the one who said that power is the greatest aphrodisiac. and so you know that there was a song only the good die young. wow. wow. uh cases you didn't die out of well there you have it. i think that's a, a pretty fair assessment. um, by

a pop culture and the reference there. now, you know, kissinger as, as we've noted, has been around the politics for so long. it is actually hard to find a foreign policy matter that didn't at least have his influence or his fingerprints on it, on this back half of the 20th century. but perhaps chief among those criticisms was startling, an earlier end of the vietnam war. and of course, the expansion of the secret war in laos and cambodia and in cambodia is case this bombing campaign later resulted in the rise of pull pot and the come air rouge of slaughter a quarter of cambodia as population as history. now tell us it was used as you know, sometimes us on again off again, ally talked with a little bit about his policy as it pertains to that region of southeast asia. it

was a harvard professor and he advised kennedy and johnson and ministrations. and the 1968, when richard dickson was running against hubert humphrey, he played both sides. i hate told humphrey he was going to give him access to all of nelson rockefeller's files on nixon, is that i always hated nixon. but with nicks and they play the other side, garcia, there was the go. she actually is going on in paris to end the vietnam war. and 1968. it was already been a horrible difficult, but it got the last, it's another almost 7 years actually. uh, and he got information from the insiders who were negotiating in paris and he said it to nixon and nixon was able to use it to sabotage. they undermine the negotiations. they told that you government, that he would be much more supportive,

much friendlier, that they shouldn't negotiate with that the north vietnam reason given to those terms. the final terms that the united states negotiated 5 years later and 1973 were very, very similar to what we could have gotten in 1968. but they would have bins, tens of thousands of americans more alive. and they would have been probably $1.00 to $2000000.00 vietnamese more alive, and we don't realize that. but i had robert mcnamara come into my class a few years ago. mcnamara said that mcknight was a former secretary defense. that was also considered the architect of the vietnam, moore and mac marriage said that he accepted that 3800000 in viet nam, may just died. and that fighting 3800000 and kissed dry the hand in a lot of that. and so when the he and nixon get in there,

they immediately have this very, very aggressive policy operation, doc hook, which is going to be a massive bombing policy that was described as a savage bobby policy. and there were even options for use of nuclear weapons. unfortunately, there was such huge protest in the fall of 1969 that nixon was forced to or is actual. yeah. is it that the fall that next was forced to abandon that policy, but kissinger was all in on this viciously savage policy. but everything about the vietnam war was average and then later the united states is going to begin bombing the north again. so the kissinger's policy with nick's in was one of the vietnam ization. the idea was, if we can po, most the american troops out and let the vietnamese take over a. meanwhile,

we'll just try to bomb them back to the stone age. that would be the best, the united states to get away with their and yeah, what it is, is one of the worst atrocities in human history. now we, we, we, dr. yeah, absolutely. i mean, it was rumored that his orders were to take down anything that moves or anything that flies at all gets shot then. yeah. what you're referred to, as you mentioned before, is that the united states had been bombing in laos since 1964. but that accelerated enormously under kissinger and nixon. and we also be and bombing in cambodia, supposedly to test drive a north vietnamese sanctuaries in cambodia. and the amount of bombing that we did in those 2 countries is, was truly obscene. and what if it didn't destroy allows entirely, but it did destroy the foundation of cambodia. and the more we bottom,

the more they compare rouge as a i recruited. and then the commodities took over at a time when the fabric of cambodian society had been totally rent asunder. and what we saw as a result was risk genocide. perhaps 2000000 people died really as a result of american policy, kissinger's policy, kissinger over so gives you over saw the bombing and vietnam and the pick targets. i mean, there was so much blood on this guy's hands, that for him to be considered a brilliant statesman and a social lied. who is always an advisor to all the presidents and hob nob with everybody in society. is really a reflection on the lack of basic decency and many circles of us policy policy major. i agree ever. it probably speaks to the moral corruption here in,

in washington, dc. and now, professor, while many would actually place this guy in the camp of cold warrior, you know, with his staunch position against the ussr, he was anti communist and all of that, why would he be the one to move toward? they talk with china. i mean landing president nixon in beijing in 1972, setting up this architecture for modern day us china relations. a couple of things to consider their number one. he wasn't the one who suggested at 1st. the gall has suggested that kind of rock publish mode with china. the kissinger saw it as a way to separate china from russia. much is today, us policy makers are trying to figure out ways to drive a wedge between russia and china. kissinger saw this as

a way to do that back in the 1970s. and there was already a lot of tension between the soviet union and china. so it gets, it just nearly exploded that the driving force behind that policy. and a lot of regards was dixon, more than much even more than kissinger, helen thomas, giving that to american university a few years ago, said the kitchen as it gets credit bill is really next is policy just wondered any of our china was? so i'm not sure how accurate that is, but they saw it as a way to separate drive, a wedge between russia, the soviet union and china. and it succeeded in that regard. and then later it, kissinger does a push for daytime, with the soviet union also. so, i mean, there are some things that he achieve that we might say has a positive impact. but if you look at our balance overall of this man's career

and what he represented, the negatives overwhelmingly outweigh the positives. you know, that sort of like people saying, you know, hitler was trying to his grandchildren or help them with good with, with kids. you know. yeah. maybe that's true. i don't know a lot, but paint apparent other forgive is other crimes. yeah, exactly. he loved to paint and he was a vegetarian. yes. that doesn't really quite make up for it. does it professor? oh, don't go anywhere a lot more to talk with you about. all right, coming up next. we'll look at kissinger as role in chalet and other latin american countries. we're going to discuss it all when we return with peter cruz. next it tight. m o will be right back. the the

is already those lines. it was can be started by lines. these can be expanded by true importance of we could never be of a station. so that transparency is extraordinary. john mystic patrice then just succeeded in finding documents that existed in making them available to the world public. i mean, what could be more moving back by publishing information and sharing information with the public. he was exercising the rights for

a speech he did so in the public interest. so mommy of allies tends to me and, and, and honestly of late, continuously. and i know why advice may assume that no one who is the guy that illegal anymore wisely bought the adjustments for to be on box weighing, a 175 used to go through distance. it's all we're going to let that stay the welcome back to the m. o i. manila champ, professor peter krusik is back with us. thank you for sticking with us professor. so let's just hop right to it because there's obviously a lot to talk about when it comes to this man, henry kissinger. let's move away from asian for a moment and had to latin america for as much as washington likes to harp about

democracy and human rights. under kissinger's watch and his careful direction. the 20th century solved brutal dictatorships to be installed across south america who were friendly to the us, but certainly not a boon for human rights. on many say, today's influx of spanish speaking migrants can be traced back to kissinger's policy. is that the stabilized much of that content? can you give us sort of a birds eye view on his role in latin america? i'm sure it has the most egregious example of what kissinger did was and a really, this was very much hands on. and his policy was over throwing the end a government and see why i and they got elected as a democratic socialist and 1970. and from the very start, kissinger was at kissinger struck, endeavoured to overthrow

a. yeah. and i replaced them with the eventually the brutal dictator. augusta of pino shape. and this happens really early on. in fact, even nixon was thinking about trying to find some kind of rob approach money with a young day. but next, kissinger sabotaged that kissinger, made sure that wasn't going to happen. and then what i yeah. and that in 1972 goes before the united nations and gives that speech that was so powerful about the suffering of people in latin america. at the hands of the united states, the you and investor was george w bush. he'd been routers and shared a lot with everybody else because it was so powerful. but uh, yeah, and a really signed his own death warrant with that speech. and then the united states intensified it's operations there. and the guy ran the crew

that i killed the that top of the yeah, the yeah. and they killed themselves with a rifle that was given him as a gift by fidel castro and united states imposed, you know, shay and pos shape was a bloody dictator who maintain power there. and the kissinger bent over backwards to support pretty no shape. so even though this was a normally popular progressive democratic, the government there that was ruling the interest of the people that she like instead of the united states, kissinger was eager to destroy it. and he did it. he knew there was no strategic significance to, to a, a comment that, that she liked is a dagger pointed at the heart of an article that was very kissinger's words. he

knew was now strategically se, vivian. but he also understood that it could represent an example of what other countries in latin america could do. so as she like to become a democratic socialist republic, then why couldn't argentina and bolivia, and all these other countries. so that was why he went about to destroy it. uh and uh, cuz dixon was happy to go along. but if you follow the dialogue between the 2 of them, it is truly outrages how open they were about what the united states was doing. and we follow that up with the dirty war and argentina, and they were tens of thousands more killed in argentina with the us hands all over it. but it wasn't only that. there was also operation condo or now this was an attempt by the right wing intelligence officials throughout latin america to

eliminate the dissidence and they killed some of the lights, 13000 dissidence. these were labor leaders or the urban reformers, royal reformers. anybody who was seen as an opposition in latin america was vulnerable, and they went about and the united states supported dest squads around latin america. this is not gonna be the end of it, in reagan is going to double down on all of this. and in many ways, reagan is gonna focus more on central america, where a lot of those immigrants, the united states come from. but it gets inger was thinking about central and south america and a trail of blood, a trail of killing a trail of atrocities. a trail of rage across latin america was in large part kissinger's doing? yeah, the, the, the case of i and a, i always think of the godfather movies where the scene with the forces had,

it was kind of serving as a, as a warning shot to everybody else if you will. so professor here, state side, the political establishment in d, c r r, i would say all in lock step in their esteem and regard for kissinger, regardless of their party affiliation, every post, every secretary of state and every high ranking official over the last 4050 years have all wrapped on his door for consultation. i mean, literally until his final days, henry kissinger enjoyed a very lucrative post and governmental career without having to answer to the public. as though retired from the government. i think it's fair to describe him almost as a meritus secretary of state, or even a shadow one, despite history proving to us that his id, ology, and his policies had negative consequences all around the world. so in that sense,

kissinger lives on, doesn't he, i mean, in, in that the school a real politic has generations of followers now of kissinger was agitated by anthony blinking samantha power. many people who professed to be believe so strongly in human rights, which was the cause that, that was totally alley into kissinger. he never support is human rights is supported power, geo, political advantage domination setting the example showing that how ruthless the united states could be if you pressed it. and if you challenged any of us for august was anywhere. and kissinger was in many ways brilliant. and he did have an understanding of history and he saw the interconnections between what happens one area and what happens potentially in other areas. and it wasn't going to allow

progressive forces to get a foothold anywhere if he could prevent it. and we'd look what he did in supporting the indonesians, against the to maurice, you know, again, 20 percent 25 percent of the team or is killed with us support. we look what it did and support in the practice. danny's, i guess there are deleon's, but what becomes ultimately bangladesh, millions of people, apparently killed as a result of that least hundreds of thousands. then there's a certain kind of ruthlessness. but if you can do it with a german accent, maybe, you know, it could be, he could really learn the original german. i gave him an advantage. but, you know, you don't, it's hard to understand the appeal of a man who, who is responsible for so much killing during his lifetime at a. but he's being a bit as related and embraced and celebrated by many,

many people as it is a lot of biding, president biden likes to say that's what's going on now is a struggle between autocracy and democracy, but the london economist got it right. they said, well, we call the stroke to, you know, talk, we're seeing democracy. most of the world sees a struggle between autocracy and hip parker see. and is that had parkway, se of what the united states, the american empire has represented throughout its history since world war 2, but especially beginning with vietnam and then the afghanistan and iraq. and maybe we can go through the whole litany. and the kissinger was up to his eyebrows in that kind of worldview, that legitimize that, that sanction that, that even celebrated. it talked about american, you know,

america's role in the world that america's vision kissinger did not share any of the positive vision of a franklin roosevelt of a henry wallace of a jack kennedy of the last year of his presidency. jimmy carter in the 1st 2 years of his presidency before he becomes totally a captive of brzezinski. i mean this was an. busy in thinking person who'd learn certain lessons from what he saw going on in nazi germany. and he learned all the wrong lessons. and i think that's the tragedy. yeah, and i feel like this school of thought will continue for many more generations to come. because like you said, it's 5 hardest and add relation for henry kissinger here in washington. professor peter could next. thank you so much for your expertise. he of course peter, because nick is a professor of history and director of nuclear studies institute. thank you so much for that expert insight professor, you know?

all right, that is going to do it for this episode and modus operandi. i the show that digs deep into foreign policy and current affairs. i'm your host military and thank you so much for tuning and we'll see you again next time to figure out the m. o. the take a fresh look around his life. kaleidoscopic isn't just a shifted reality distortion by power, tired vision with no real opinions. fixtures designed to simplify will confuse who really wants a better wills, and is it just as a chosen few fractured images presented as 1st?

can you see through their allusions, going underground can the in the year of 1954, the united states of america engaged in warfare against the people of vietnam. the white house supported the corrupt above and governments of southern vietnam. 1965 americans began their invasion following the aim to defeat the forces of vietnamese patriots. the pentagon was confident that the victory would be on the american side, due to its military superiority. however, the vietnamese, during this war into total health for the occupants. unable to cope with

a guerrillas, the american army started blanket bombing alongside using chemical weapons and naples, which burns all a live village of miles away. where in 1969 american soldiers killed 504 civilians, including 210 children, became a tragic symbol of this war. all and all. during the whole period of this conflict, the usa dropped on vietnam more than $6000000.00 tons of bombs, which is 2 and a half times as much as on germany during the 2nd world war. in 1973, the american army under the pressure of the rebels, withdrew from vietnam, and only 2 years later did the puppet regime. and so i got involved. however, the vietnamese paid a high price for their freedom. more than 1000000 in vietnamese people became the victims of american aggressors.

the on waste shows is really strikes plain dozens of lives in the southern towns where the adf is spreading leaflets. purging civilians to flee the area, but to where also this, our evaluated campus transformed into a war zone between the power steering resistance and is really occupational. i mean, we're now in bluff to which recently experienced intense, showing, resulting in a significant number of casualties. a goes on in northern cal, so that won't shelter thousands of refugees. we report from the jabante account, which has been under relentless idea of fire for over 2 months. also it had on the program. jo biden's top diplomat defends washington's.