Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

Henry Kissinger, the Devil at the Dinner Party

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In the past 24 hours, everyone has published an obituary — whether appreciative, damning, or both-sidesing — for Henry Kissinger. You will not read another like Choire Sicha’s, though. He assessed the man not only as global operator, bomb-dropper, and Machiavellian centenarian but also as a pure New York City character, one whom this very magazine put on its cover many times, a man who spent his evenings being sociable alongside Astors and de la Rentas and (inevitably) Tina Brown. Most of all, Sicha catches and understands the ways in which New York power can transcend party politics and human ethics: “In Obama’s expansive drone wars, there was Kissinger going before him; in the secrecy and financial dealings of Trump and Cheney, there is Kissinger; without Kissinger Associates, there could be no absurd racket like Giuliani Partners. Kissinger is the one great commonality between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.”

—Christopher Bonanos, city editor, New York

Henry Kissinger, the Devil at the Dinner Party His long final act — after Harvard and D.C. and Cambodia — was spent at New York’s more rarefied tables.

Photo: © Taryn Simon. Courtesy Gagosian.
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