Guest all i will say is i stand behind the book for geithner you are you emotionally attached. I am not. It is an honest book. I am so pleased to welcome to the store this evening. To launch the book we are doubly pleased to have him. The book is kissinger is a shadow but he is likely known to you for his earlier book which was a finalist for the buck Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award and also the author of the empire of necessity and the blood of guatemala. Hes a professor of history at new york university. His book is on the government sources. To chart kissingers political philosophy one that stems back to the cambodian and asian argued that is responsible for the current militarization of American Foreign policy. Evan thomas rated in the Washington Post this weekend praised the book for its literary flair and the sharp eye for the absurdity of politics. We are so happy to have him here with us this evening please help me welcome greg. [applause] thank you. What a nice turnout and thank you for coming out and for that lovely introduction. I think some friends were supposed to be here. I dont know if larry was in the audience that his character of the council and we would credit him for teaching quite a bit how to write but i guess that hes not here. So when i told friends and colleagues i was writing about the legacy of the foreignpolicy made mention of the book that is quite well known and did very well, Christopher Hitchens the trial of Henry Kissinger and i saw my purpose as the debacle to the 2001 polemic which i think is a good example of what the great historian in 1936 called or dismissed as the devils theory of war the tendency to place the blame for militarism on a single isolated cause in the term and the sources of conflict to look at the big picture to consider the ways to. Aside from assembling the docket and gathering of the accused role in place a. Righteous indignation doesnt provide much room for the understanding, hitchens is deep into the dark heart. In Southern Africa and here in the circle in washington, d. C. This is a side of the price of power kissinger in the Nixon White House was published in 1983 and that did capture the secretive world of the fascinating Security Apparatus as it was functioning during the vietnam war and the study of kissinger, the paranoia reads like a prelude to todays prevailing surveillance and counterterrorism stated that we now live under. This gave us the defining portrait of any biographer that follows will have to top this between the ruthlessness to advance a career cursing the fates and letting the b52 fly small in the vanities and shabby in the motives and kissinger is nonetheless shakespearian because the pettiness gets played out on the world stage with epic consequences. But writing in the early 1980s could know the longterm effects not only of the specific policies but of how the imperial extons sister chose extension was on. Who in the 1930s took us after a quick detour into central america, deeper into the gulf and then after 9 11 into afghanistan and iraq so the shadow is long and hence the title of the book. Kissinger is 92yearsold and his wife courses through like a bright red lion from the jungles of vietnam and cambodia to the sands of the persian gulf shedding light on the road that brought us to now where we find ourselves. I think some of the early reviews of the book have gotten this wrong but i do not hold kissinger responsible from the evolution to the United StatesNational Security state and to the perpetual motion machine that it has become. I dont think that if you extract kissinger from u. S. History there is a virtuous republic. Its the state like no one else and in particular he was a key player during the transformative moment of the imperial presidency in the 1960s and 1970s when the vietnam war and watergate began to undermine the traditional foundations on which the cold war policy and National Security states stood since the beginning of the 1940s, since the 1940s. The lead of planning and the bipartisan consensus and public support and now the unraveling. It was related nixon and kissinger did it takes a crisis to a new level of which kissinger was the architect and the engineer. It was at kent and Jackson University that led directly to watergate and the downfall in 1974. More crying and paranoia. Today watergate is remembered largely as a domestic scandal but when we learned of foreignpolicy gamely to decide to keep the bombing of cambodia secret and it was kissinger more than any other staffer in the white house who got nixon riled up about the Daniel Ellsberg and the pentagon papers and more specifically about the secret bombing of cambodia as far as i know certainly not the nixon but there is a fleet that went to the pentagon papers of what they were doing after 1969. Kissinger began the meeting with curse that son of a bitch, hes a despicable bastard. He was described in the annunciation of ellsberg he keyed his performance to start up next ins various resentments and he looked at him she looked at him as a liberal and hedonistic subversive promiscuous and privileged hes now married a very rich girl, kissinger told nixon and nixon was fascinated earlier. Henry got nixon cranked up and then he started cranking each other up. Kissinger told nixon that shows that you are a link weakling mr. President. So crimes lead to more crimes than he was involved in the early plotting including the wiretaps and and associates, surveillances and meetings where the nations highest officers were smearing antiwar dissidents on both treasonous allegiance is where they were plotting to block mail former president s and throw up. Couple of states and the institute and give orders to run the paramilitary operations that led to watergate. Even as vietnam and watergate were beginning to break up the old National Security state, kissinger who had survived and we can talk later on in the questions about how we manage to survive watergate and continue on under the successor gerald ford was helping with the reconstruction of the National Security state and a new form, kind of a restored imperial presidency capable of moving forward into the postvietnam world and many different elements of this restored National Security state. I will touch on a few of them but i try to go in detail in the book one is the increased dependency on secrecy and covert action. There will be the support of insurgencies and thirdparty mercenaries in Southern Africa particularly in angola they provided a template for the expansion of similar covert operations throughout the third world would lead to the iran contra and theres a connection. The second element that is central to the restoration of the imperial stages but increased by militarism to leverage the domestic polarization as the domestic consensus unraveled the war or threat of war or just the violence and brutality was used to leverage the polarization and division for the domestic advantage and this is not new. Every president prior to nixon used the war or Foreign Policy for the domestic and but i think that in this kind of post consensus unraveled in nixon and kissinger in some ways. Its the attempt to win over the democrats for the 1972 election to ensure the landslide and keep the potential rightwing thirdparty in the Republican Party and in many ways the strategy had a foreignpolicy come of the destruction and brutality visited on cambodia and vietnam. It is directly aimed at keeping the Southern States and the sutherland sentences. They said that the federal courts should stay out of the affairs of the mississippi and South Carolina in one meeting. We wouldnt have had the cambodia as a way of kind of proving that nixon was a hawk so that element of the National Security state leveraging particularly the brutal militarism as a way of winning over the right kind of attributes to the right to get started under reagan and nixon. It was the deployment of ever more spectacular displays of violence to shock and awe. Its leading to the disaster that we are living under today. I think that it is neither covert or political opportunism that kissingers chief competition to the vietnam resurgence in American Military militarism whether it was metaphysical. Conventional wisdom opposes Henry Kissinger to dick cheney and paul wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and others that drove to iraq. Its sad set up to be a different philosophical tradition than the arrogance of an administration that fought the United States military was so powerful that it could make reality. I dont believe you remember that quote but the empire now when we act we make reality and it is true that many of the prominent neocons in the last days did use kissinger as a foil and said and he was a sinner because he supposedly didnt believe that american righteousness should guide its foreignpolicy and others have that famous morality inserted into the 1976 republican platform, Republican Party platform which you can think of as an antikissinger think tank that i think conventional wisdom is wrong. If it is taken as a view of the world that holds that reality is transparent but the truth of the facts can be derived from simply preserving the facts and kissinger was definitely and is not a realistic. Of all the policymakers that helped shape the postworld war ii National Security state, kissinger was perhaps the most selfaware of the philosophical foundations that justified his actions. He was deeply influenced by an antirationalist and extremely subjective strain of the metaphysics that considering how often we used to justify the war might be called in. Alexis tantalus on. Kissinger was an accidental list. You can read the 1950 undergraduate thesis the longest ever submitted to harvard university, 400 pages, and it reads it is tough going. But the echo of the 1950s accessed angeles on his present and the intense subjectivity that there is no reality other than one that emanates from our own individual experience of the radical freedom and tragedy and suffering is the hallmark of existence and there is no meaning to existence other than the meaning that we assign as individuals and people have a responsibility to act in the world. In the footnotes of course where the other accessed angeles use that different kind of morality from the accessed angeles from to protest the war and the entire kissinger used it to defend and advance the war and empire. So in kissingers shadow to explain this how it manifested itself in its specific policies and that after he left office in his advice as a foreignpolicy intellectuals. But the thesis is darkening that proves you can see how the fox kind of runs through much of his considerations about the foreignpolicy and how he justifies his actions up until the latest book world order. For some of this nature belief in this romanticism is that action creates the perception of reality and that the past has no meaning other than what we assign it and that the future is undetermined and its refused to be paralyzed by the the patent held by the overabundance of data as the modern bureaucracies into the statesman act on hunches. The creation of the definition its the responsibility of the true leaders not only to maintain the protection of order they have to find the material for the creation. They are leading to some of the neoconservative idea lets him. Theres a fascinating site of passage in the 1954 doctoral dissertation. It would be highly unstable and make the limited war almost inevitable. Its achieved by the fact into the consciousness of the awareness of balance. Its too creepy awareness that one needs to be willing to act. The action has to be avoided to show that action was possible. Action can overcome the paralyzing fear of the drastic consequences that might result from action in this case talking about the potential of nuclear escalation. The purpose was to create an awareness of the american purpose that circularity of the reasoning. They are doing well but they dont know why they are doing it. They dont have purpose. Its a circularity that the purpose of American Power is to create an awareness and american purpose. We cant defend the interest and nobody interests are until we defend them. Kissinger taught there was no such thing as the estess international affairs. The cover has become tested. But in the book i focused a good deal on cambodia as a good example of the perpetual motion machine as it has been demonstrated by other historians it doesnt contest it in any form they get elected by helping derail and passing information about the paris peace talks in the fall of 1968 but mixing used to derail and make sure that humphrey would get no bump from the potential ceasefire. And that action prolonged the war from five pointless years. They couldnt start a bombing bombing North Vietnam for a lot of different political reasons so they began to bomb cambodia in secret. They died as a result of the bombing campaign. And there you have it we have to escalate in order to prove and the more evidence we have to escalate. The madman policy in the idea the North Vietnamese would think whatever from performance and in an accident to convey the actual act and the ravaging of the country from nowhere but the ravage. Nixon and kissingers bombing helped accelerate and provoked the coup that ended up to the invasion that helped spread of the civil the civil war in which escalated the bombing so again the circle remains unbroken and not just in cambodia. Over and over again in in laos and vietnam and angola and mozambique and elsewhere kissinger offers repeatedly plunged into the circular argument in action has to be avoided in order to show that action is possible. We showed the in saigon they gave a famous piece of advice that the United States has to take some action somewhere in the world. So they continued out of office to step up the bombing of iraq in the 1990s as a way of demonstrating american purpose. Thats what he and nixon did in Southeast Asia kissinger told clinton and whether we got it right or not is really secondary second, its not that remarkable a statement at least not when one considers the demonstrative effects arent american. The demonstrative effects are not necessarily on other people. Its to proved that we are willing to do something and that the effects produced by the onetwo act of the world are or important than the consequences of that act of the foreign victims. We go through where this played out in the country. All of this might sound familiar and it should work basically it is the same, kissingers philosophy is basically that metaphysical advance of the neocons who believe that america creates its own reality and they constantly complain that americans have grown too soft. Paul wolfowitz complained that there were not enough casualties as a way of kind of hardening america to the fight. The u. S. Would act as if it were the foregone conclusion. It echoes and you can trace a direct lineage from cheney to kissinger on the whole body of the kind of german irrationalism and continental irrationalism. Kissinger was an early supporter of attacking not just afghanistan and iraq that somalia and yemen as well as called on george bush to launch a revolution into the International Sweep away for the notions of sovereignty. On august 22, 2002 when dick cheney laid out the fullest case why iraq was the only option coming directly quoted kissinger saying it was a pre preemption and once it turned a disaster the statement regularly with staffers citing the experience and be a time for the u. S. Southern withdrawals of the troops. I spent a lot of time in the neoconservativism but its really just the highly selfconscious broad consensus that reaches out well beyond republicans the republicans to capture the ideologue pragmatist idealists alike. Hillary clinton protested the invasion of cambodia and recently praised kissinger calling him a friend saying that she relied on the council and the famous realist referring to the most recent book sounds surprisingly idealistic and then she said kissingers vision is her vision just and liberal. The defense intellectuals and journalists have essays explaining the trouble. They often have difficulty defining what exactly that would look like. Often kissinger is defined in negative terms. Without knowing its purpose i tried to show that it is exactly that but i think it is an effective of kissinger himself of the rehabilitation of the National Security state and the relentless militarism that goes with it. Constant unending war with the drum like a drone like efficiency has done more than cause fought and morality and brought about a disassociation of words and things, belief and action of which abstractions are sent to the opposite. According to clinton, idealists are realists and everybody is a liberal and Henry Kissinger is our avatar. If your civilians died from. Hes right and that the political argument that he made at the time in the 1960s justified his illegal war in cambodia and laos. At the time as far out of the mainstream. This is especially true of the idea that the u. S. Had the right to violate and to destroy enemy sanctuaries. Youll find no safe haven, barack obama said allowing kissinger his resolution. I think, i wanted to end on that because it is that on broken circle. Kissinger looked at so he could look at what he did in cambodia in chile and elsewhere. What he did nearly half a century ago created the conditions of todays endless war. Those with the obama liberals. Thank you. [applause]. Let me congratulate you on being able to open a dialogue that is long overdue. I just want to ask is i want to broaden it a little, this runs throughout our culture. He goes b