Will the social media generation remember Henry Kissinger’s impact?

In today’s 24/7 social media-driven world, one wonders how long Henry Kissinger’s fame will last. 

As filled headlines around the world, Kissinger died last week at 100. The tributes and taunts directed at him in death reflected a brilliant and very controversial career that began as a private in the U.S. Army during World War II and ended at the heights of near-universal celebrity status. 

Memories today are shockingly short. Another secretary of State who was also a national security advisor like Kissinger (as well as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) died in 2021. How many people can name him?  It was Gen. Colin Powell.

An account in Walter Isaacson’s “Kissinger: A Biography” notes that when Powell was the secretary of State, in 2002, he hosted a dinner for Kissinger at the State Department. Powell raised a glass towards Kissinger and said that this was only the second time a secretary of State toasted the national security advisor. Allowing the audience to exchange puzzled looks, Powell continued.  

“The first time was when Henry held both offices,” which Kissinger did after Richard Nixon appointed him to secretary of State.  

Kissinger later said he knew where Powell was headed with his toast. But that is by no means necessarily correct. Kissinger had the presence of mind to turn almost any comment in his favor no matter how surprised he might have been beforehand.

In the thousands of stories on his life and the obituaries, his triumphs and failures were duly recorded. Rather than repeat them, one area so far has been underreported. That was Kissinger’s interest in artificial intelligence.

In 2021, Kissinger along with Google founder Eric Schmidt and MIT dean and AI researcher Daniel Huttenlocher published “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future.” Part of the authors’ forecasts were pessimistic warnings. AI could, if mishandled, become potentially existential to society. This was not because of a Terminator-like villain materializing from the future or a “Skynet” computer/AI system that decided to take over the world. The authors fear that unregulated AI could give those intending to do grave harm the tools to do so. 

As with virtually every other invention, substantial downsides and dangers arise. Nuclear power brought nuclear weapons. The internal combustion engine led to pollution and climate change issues. Time will tell whether these cautions will prove to be real or resemble the Y2K problem in which computers allegedly could not adjust to 1999 becoming 2000, crashing global information platforms. That did not happen.

In a curious coincidence, Kissinger’s first foray into AI was similar to his first assessment of nuclear weapons and strategy. In 1957, Kissinger produced “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy,” which attracted a great deal of notice and was a very large stepping stone in propelling him into prominence. 

However, there was a major problem. Kissinger argued that tactical nuclear weapons could be used to advance foreign policy for a simple reason. They were not seen as powerful and strategic nuclear weapons capable of eviscerating cities as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were.

Consciously or not, when the Kennedy administration swept into office four years later, it adopted the strategy of “flexible response.” The assumption was that the United States needed military capabilities to counter the USSR at every level of conflict from counterinsurgency to conventional, tactical nuclear and strategic nuclear war.  However, no one could fight or win any nuclear war that escalated to a strategic exchange.

Years later, Kissinger admitted his flawed thinking and did so because it was clear the idea was simply dangerous and he wanted to move on to much broader strategies such as embracing China as a counterweight to the USSR and seeking to establish a detente with Moscow.  

These policy shifts were not his. President Nixon set them into motion. And Kissinger was the brilliant tactician who carried them out with extraordinary diplomatic skill for which over time, and with Nixon’s forced resignation, would become seen as the creator of these strategies — which he was not.

It is impossible to know how Kissinger will be regarded in even a few years. He was the diplomat of his era no matter his shortcomings. Presidents tend to be forgotten. Ronald Reagan may be the exception as “Reaganism” remains central to centrist Republican thinking.

And it will be hard to eject Donald Trump from the public’s memory whether he wins or loses the election in 2024 if he runs. This leads to an interesting dinner party question. Three, four or five years hence, who will be better remembered: Trump or Kissinger? I hope it is Kissinger!

Harlan Ullman is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available on Amazon. He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.