Vox Sentences - The victims of Henry Kissinger

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Here’s the agenda today:

UP FIRST: Henry Kissinger is dead

CATCH UP: Biden’s ambitious plan to eliminate lead pipes

— Dylan Scott, senior correspondent

What Henry Kissinger wrought

David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

Henry Kissinger, perhaps the most influential diplomat of the Cold War, died Wednesday at the age of 100.

What’s left to say about Henry Kissinger? He had a remarkable personal story: Born in Germany, his family fled to the United States to escape the Nazis and he later returned to his homeland to fight the Hitler regime, earning military honors. He would serve as the top foreign policy adviser to Presidents Nixon and Ford and, in that role, he advanced a philosophy of “realism”: The world is an anarchic place and nation-states must act accordingly to secure their own material interests. 

That worldview led Kissinger to advocate for a detente with the Soviet Union and opening US relations with China. At the same time, the United States became cozy with murderous dictators because, in the view of Kissinger and the presidents he served, those relationships gave the US a geopolitical edge over its rivals.

It is tempting to, as I am doing, talk about Kissinger in terms of his enormous personality (a world-altering diplomat by day, notorious playboy by night) and his role in the Great Game of statecraft (I have been reading John le Carré of late). But his work, the values he chose to put into practice, impacted millions upon millions of lives, people for whom there will never be public remembrances, who never garnered Kissinger’s celebrity or infamy.

Today, of all days, it is worth remembering them:

• Henry Kissinger supported Pakistan's genocide in Bangladesh. Kissinger advocated for the Nixon administration’s quiet support of what is now Pakistan (then West Pakistan) in its vicious campaign against the people who lived in what was then East Pakistan (now the nation of Bangladesh). After India began supporting East Pakistan, Kissinger and Nixon authorized the illegal transfer of arms to West Pakistan. More than 200,000 people died in the conflict, 200,000 women were raped, and 10 million Bangladeshis were forced to flee their homeland.
• Henry Kissinger supported Indonesia's bloody invasion of East Timor. Indonesian dictator Suharto, whose government relied on US military support, directly posed the question to Kissinger and Ford at a private meeting in 1975: If his regime decided to invade East Timor, which had recently elected a leftist government, would he have America’s backing? The US leaders said he would. The subsequent invasion killed at least 100,000 civilians.
• Henry Kissinger backed brutal bombing raids in Cambodia. The US itself put its military might to ferocious use in Cambodia. Kissinger implemented Nixon’s orders to greatly expand bombing raids in that country. Those bombings killed a lot of people on their own — estimates range from 50,000 to 300,000 — and also provided fuel for the Khmer Rouge insurgency in the country, which would kill between 1.5 and 3 million people after it successfully overtook Cambodia’s pro-US government in 1975.

Read the rest of Dylan Matthews’s reflections on the consequences of Henry Kissinger’s influence.

Biden’s ambitious plan to eliminate lead pipes

Gina Pricope/Getty Images

The Biden administration is proposing to eliminate almost all lead piping in the United States. About 9 million pipes throughout the country would need to be replaced; the EPA puts the likely price tag for such an endeavor between $20 and $30 billion. Utilities would be required to pick up much of the tab, though there is about $15 billion available from last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill to help offset their costs.

It is a daunting project, practically and financially. But the end result would be an American water supply with much less lead, a neurotoxin in lead that can damage the nervous system and brain, particularly those of infants and young children: 

• Lead can impair cognitive development and cause behavioral disorders. Previous estimates found that as many as 15 million Americans may be drinking water that’s been contaminated by lead pipes. A 2015 analysis found that more than 5,000 US communities were violating federal requirements for the monitoring of lead and copper levels in water.
• Water utilities say implementing the proposal will be a serious challenge. Rising costs for supplies, supply chain problems, labor shortages and flawed building records were cited by the industry as obstacles to completing the project. At the same time, there was some disappointment among public health experts that the Biden administration is not calling for the complete elimination of lead in drinking water; instead, the EPA wants to reduce the allowable amount.
• Lead exposure is a worldwide problem. Nearly half of the world’s children are exposed to dangerous levels of lead, according to a 2021 systematic review. Though the global impact of lead is difficult to measure, one recent estimate put the number of people who die prematurely worldwide because of lead exposure at 5.5 million annually — more people than are killed by HIV, malaria, and auto accidents combined.

• South Africa’s universal health care plan is postponed. Only 16 percent of the country has private medical coverage, and the existing public health system is overrun. The government has a $27 billion proposal to pay for almost all medical care through accredited providers. But a planned vote was postponed over provider concerns about its funding and implementation. [Bloomberg]
• Russia places a blanket ban on “the LGBT movement.” Opposing LGBTQ+ rights has been a calling card of Vladimir Putin’s regime and a new court ruling could clamp down on activists even more. Activists fear the ban’s vague wording could give the government grant carte blanche to intimidate and jail people who support equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community. [Associated Press]
• Why Israel’s war in Gaza has been so deadly. The Israeli military has expanded authorizations for striking non-military targets, loosened rules for civilian casualties, and put artificial intelligence to work in identifying potential targets. [+972 Magazine]

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