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HENRY Kissinger’s life knew how to deliver a quote. But context is king and without being aware of the context in which it was delivered, a quote can easily be misinterpreted.
Take, for example, when Kissinger said: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
This quote is doing the rounds in the context of Trump’s moves in Ukraine and his vilification of its increasingly embattled president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Given that Donald Trump favours the Russian position over that of Ukraine, the same country the US and its allies armed, funded, and diplomatically supported against Russia for years in an effort to grind down Moscow in an ‘unwinnable’ war before taking the ultimate U-turn, Kissinger’s seemingly blisteringly honest observation seems to ring true.
However, would Kissinger, who was known for his realpolitik and bluntness but was also dedicated to advancing US policy, actually admit to such a thing, and that too in the midst of the Cold War when the US needed all the allies it could get?
When you dig into the context of the quote it turns out that Kissinger was talking to American writer William F. Buckley, soon after the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, about the need for Nixon to support the US’s then-ally Nguyen Van Thieu, a Vietnamese general who became the president of South Vietnam after a deeply rigged election the year before and was embroiled in a conflict with the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army.
The full quote reportedly goes like this: “Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem [the first president of South Vietnam who had been deposed and killed in a CIA-backed coup five years earlier], the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
America’s U-turn on Ukraine has unnerved Europe.
So, this wasn’t an acceptance of America’s perfidy so much as it was an appeal for America to not abandon an ally and thus be seen as perfidious which, one imagines, would scare off existing and potential allies.
That’s exactly what Trump has done. Not only has he effectively reversed decades of US policy when it comes to curtailing and containing Russia, he has also sent a clear message that those who take up arms on behalf of the US can be disposed of much like a soiled tissue paper. Not just that, they can also be shaken down, gangster-style and be asked to give up half their mineral wealth as some form of payback for services rendered.
Nowhere is the impact of this being felt more deeply than in Europe, the leaders of which are scrambling to come up with some way to keep the Ukraine war going in the backdrop of a looming US withdrawal.
European leaders have already faced a humiliating dressing down at the hands of American Vice President J.D. Vance who came to Munich to lecture Europeans on free speech and migration before going off to meet Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s far-right AFD, while pointedly ignoring German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. I wonder what those who spent decades screaming about Russian electoral interference will have to say about that?
One should also note that prior to this, American oligarch and close Trump ally Elon Musk, also gave a speech at an AFD rally and has been actively supporting the party on X. The AFD, along with other European far-right parties, has carefully positioned itself against the Ukraine war, and has certainly exploited the economic consequences of that war on Germany, consequences that are deeply felt by the European taxpayer.
The cutting off of Russian energy and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, has had serious consequences for European countries, which — according to the US Congressional Research Service — have spent up to seven per cent of their GDP “shielding consumers and firms from rising energy costs”.
With talk of raising European defence spending and preparing a 20 billion euro defence package for Israel it is clear that the economic pain will increase and that this will be exploited by Trump’s right-wing European allies. In contrast, the CSR notes that “the implications of Russian sanctions for US trade overall have arguably been minimal”.
More damningly, Russia hasn’t been hurt as badly as the sanctions-mongers expected. The CSR reports that “the broad consensus was that the new sanctions would devastate the Russian economy [however] Russia’s economy has proved resilient”, by transitioning to a war economy and pivoting to alternative economic partners like China, Turkey, Brazil and India.
As for the rest of the world there’s a feeling that Ukraine, Canada and Europe are only now learning what we always knew: that the friendship of princes is a fickle thing, and that Empire acknowledges no allies, only vassals and subjects.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2025
