Disregarding Kissinger's role in alleged war crimes, Kissinger is widely respected as a foreign policy genius.
But it seems that Kissinger's achievements were really blown out of proportion and that he actually has quite a lot of failures to his name (the administration's support of Pakistan in the Bangladesh war of independence, the fall of Saigon, the handling of the Yom Kippur war etc.). The biggest foreign policy success of the States in those days, the China opening, seems to have been Nixon's brainchild much more than Kissinger's,
I've read this scathing critique of Kissinger's role in the Yom Kippur war in the London Review of Books,, that frankly makes him look like a blabbering madman at times.
I'd like to know if my appraisal is dead wrong, if not, why then is Kissinger still so respected?
This is a really provocative and endlessly fascinating. Kissinger has been in a major figure in lots of my research, but I don't think I've ever come to grips with the 'real' HK. And being a controversial figure, there have been millions of words written about him, both critical and hagiographic. So, why is he hailed - in some quarters at least - as a 'foreign policy genius'?
Firstly - and crucially - we have to contend with Kissinger's own capacity for both publicity and mythmaking. There are few post-WW2 public, governmental figures - and I really mean this in global terms - who have been so invested in the creation and maintenance of their own myth. Many people believe Kissinger is a genius because Kissinger keeps telling them he's a genius. For example, his three volumes of extremely problematic (as sources of historical evidence) memoirs can be used as prima facie evidence in the mythmaking case. Of course, this is true for almost all memoirs, but Kissinger's desire to be seen as being at the centre of world affairs regardless of the role he was actually playing shine through in those volumes. Moreover, those memoirs are equally remarkable for the things that they don't pay attention to as they are for the things that they foreground (Nixon-Kissinger nuclear non-proliferation policy [or the lack thereof], for one). He was also an astute manipulator of public image, courting the media, having high-profile relationships with prominent actresses, and generally being something of an A-list celebrity.
Secondly - and very much related to the above - is (to use Mario Del Pero's words) "Kissinger-as-symbol". Aspirational presidents, foreign policy leaders, and others have all used Kissinger as the avatar of a particular kind of US foreign policy: decisive, muscular, and above all realist (in the international relations sense). See, for example, the 2008 presidential campaign debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, where both sought to position themselves as foreign policy realists and co-opt Kissinger-as-symbol. For McCain and Obama, Kissinger was used as a symbol of engaging with an enemy without preconditions, Iran being the subject of debate in 2008 and the reference point being the PRC in 1972. It's a sad fact that Kissinger is possibly the best known diplomat of the twentieth century, for good or ill. And it's probable that many Americans would give his name first if asked "name a diplomat".
And, to be fair, HK does have the sheen of diplomatic victories: the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, detente in general, the opening to China. But as the OP correctly points out, Kissinger's involvement in woefully misguided - frequently criminal - foreign policy - tarnishes whatever reputation he might have. And even prior to coming into the Nixon cabinet, he was a willing participant in the Nixon campaigns attempt [edit: I should have been much clearer here and talked about the Nixon campaign's contribution to - and hope for - the collapse of the talks. My existing wording implies sole responsibility for their collapse, which - as has been pointed out - both diminishes the agency of North and South Vietnamese participants and implies that the interference was a crucial factor. I am grateful to /u/insaneHoshi for their contributions in this regard in the thread below. And see also /u/jbdyer's far more comprehensive appreciation of this topic] to sabotage the 1968 Vietnam peace talks in Paris, and thus being party to prolonging the conflict for another agonising six years and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Kissinger's rise also relied on non-traditional approaches. He did not come to power through electoral politics, traditional government service, or success in business. Kissinger relied on academic circles, think tanks, and the institutions that were created to fight World War Two and the Cold War. Related to mythmaking and publicity, this brought him a level of glamour and interest perhaps lacking in other figures of his ilk.
That's something of a brief, surface-level take on things, as I have to head off to a meeting! However, happy to be involved in any follow-up questions. And I am certain that many other contributors will have much more valuable and insightful points to make.
Malcolm
Sources and Reading (will add more when I'm closer to my bookshelves!)
Bass, Gary, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (New York: Knopf, 2013)
Del Pero, Mario, The Eccentric Realist (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)
Grandin, Greg, Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015)
Hanhimäki, Jussi, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
Suri, Jeremi, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge: Harvard, 2007)
So many famous people have died this year Queen Elizabeth, Olivia Newton-John, 2 Sesame Street actors Luis, and Bob, Meatloaf, Christine McVie, John Madden, Betty White, runner Tony Waldrop, golfer Bob Ackerman III, Rapper Coolio, Fred Hickman, Alan White, Ray Guy, Senator Bob Dole, Donald Rumsfeld, Irene Cara, Dave Butz NFL defensive tackle, Nick Bollettieri, Bill Russell, and Gaylord Perry.