Washington, D.C. – Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Wednesday – to “develop his foreign policy expertise,” according to The Washington Post, citing three anonymous sources close to Trump.
Kissinger, who served officially under U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has long been considered by many in the GOP establishment as a guru of sorts on foreign policy but is reviled in many circles as a genocidal warmonger whose policies directly led to the deaths of an estimated 3-4 million.
Trump may want to rethink who he receives “foreign policy expertise” from, as Kissinger is the embodiment of the imperial U.S. war machine.
Greg Grandin, a history professor at New York University, recently published a book on Kissinger titled Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman, which he summarized briefly in an article for The Nation:
Let’s consider some of Kissinger’s achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy–maker. He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistan’s ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the U.S.’s arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level…
Over-reliance on Saudi oil? That’s Kissinger. Blowback from the instrumental use of radical Islam to destabilize Soviet allies? Again, Kissinger. An unstable arms race in the Middle East? Check, Kissinger. Sunni-Shia rivalry? Yup, Kissinger. The impasse in Israel-Palestine? Kissinger. Radicalization of Iran? “An act of folly” was how veteran diplomat George Ball described Kissinger’s relationship to the Shah. Militarization of the Persian Gulf? Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger.
Trump recently gave a major foreign policy speech that seemed to have scared the entrenched neocon security apparatus, as 117 self-described members of “the Republican national security community,” including leading neocons and right-wing analysts penned an open letter denouncing Trump.
The military-industrial complex has been the proverbial sacred cow of U.S. government since the end of World War II – sequestering power and influence in the industry of war and those that support it, as warned of by President Dwight D. Eisenhower during his farewell address.
Trump’s stated intentions of potentially leaving NATO, criticism of the Iraq war, and praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, equated to disowning a foreign policy that has been dominated by militaristic nationalists and neocons for the past 30-plus years.
During his speech on foreign policy, Trump said stated that a new geopolitical path forward would be achieved by disregarding the old establishment experts for new people and ideas.
“My goal is to establish a foreign policy that will endure for several generations. That’s why I also look and have to look for talented experts with approaches and practical ideas, rather than surrounding myself with those who have perfect resumes but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war. We have to look for new people.”
It’s apparent that Trump’s “America First” foreign policy doesn’t sit well with the neocon establishment. Just last week Trump met with former Secretary of State James Baker, who served under President George H.W. Bush, to discuss U.S. foreign policy, with Baker reportedly telling a congressional hearing that he believed Trump’s foreign policy proposals would destabilize the world on the same day, according to Reuters.
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/globalist-making-infamous-henry-kissinger-trump-develop-foreign-policy-expertise/