Thread by @isaacstonefish

My book America Second is out today from Knopf.
Among other things, I argue that Henry Kissinger is an agent of Chinese influence, and the American most responsible for the problems with China today. What does that mean? Thread:
penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612674/a…

Most people focus on the misdeeds Kissinger committed while in office in the 1970s, as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. I argue that Kissinger’s real betrayal came in the decades that he ran Kissinger Associates, the consulting company he founded in 1982.

Kissinger convinced many Americans to acquiesce to China: to the determinant of America, and the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party, and to Kissinger.

What happened? As I discuss at length in the book, over the last four decades, Kissinger earned tens of millions of dollars consulting for American companies eager to enter the Chinese market.

To maintain access to Chinese leaders, Kissinger dampened criticism of Beijing, and amplified praise – both inside the White House and without. He was stunningly influential in every Republican administration, and many of the Democratic ones as well. Why did he do it?

Some of the men who worked closest with Kissinger talked about his almost pathological need to deceive. “I admire Henry,” said Richard V. Allen, Reagan’s first national security adviser. “What is troubling about him is why he needs to be so devious and manipulative.

Even his close aide Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who in his 2012 obituary The New York Times called “Kissinger’s Kissinger,” said “Kissinger doesn’t lie because it’s in his interest, he lies because it’s in his nature.”

Did Kissinger know what he was doing? I don’t know; he refused to talk to me for this book. He is one of the most brilliant Americans of the 20th century. It’s tragic that he wasn’t more honest, or vigilant.
For those upset with Beijing’s influence in America, understand this:

By helping to normalize corruption among former diplomats and warping U.S. perception of China over the last four decades, Kissinger has done more harm to U.S. interests than every ethnically Chinese businessman, hacker, spy, whether they hold U.S. or Chinese citizenship. (end)