Breaking American Pride Under Elliott’s tutelage, Kissinger learned to put British interests ahead of America’s. This was the heart and soul of the Round Table agenda, and Kissinger learned it well. He devoted his life to breaking US power, so we would have to accept British plans for global government. Kissinger was fated to be the hammer that would break America’s pride. On May 10, 1982, Kissinger spoke at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) in London, known as Chatham House. He was on home ground at the RIIA, an institution founded by Milner’s Round Table and wholly devoted to its goals. Knowing he was among friends, Kissinger spoke with unusual candor about the special relationship between the US and UK, and about the peculiar role Kissinger had played personally in promoting British interests in Washington. Referring to the period during and after World War II, Kissinger said:
“The British were so matter-of-factly helpful that they became a participant in internal American deliberations, to a degree probably never before practiced between sovereign nations. … In my White House incarnation then, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department.”
The period of what Kissinger called his “White House incarnation” would have been 1973-1977, when he served as National Security Advisor (1969-1975) and Secretary of State (1973-1977) for Presidents Nixon and Ford. These were years of unprecedented crisis for America, including defeat in Vietnam and Nixon’s forced resignation. Kissinger’s admission that he “kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged” than his own State Department during these perilous years raises questions of motive, loyalty, and judgment. It could be argued that Kissinger’s 1982 speech constitutes an admission that he was, in fact, acting as a double agent for the British. Losing Vietnam on Purpose For most Americans, defeat in Vietnam was a bitter and senseless tragedy. Kissinger, however, seemed to view it in a positive light, as a necessary course correction for America. When Kissinger spoke of America’s “rude awakening” in his 1982 speech at Chatham House, he could hardly conceal a tone of grim satisfaction. Kissinger said: “It was therefore a rude awakening when in the 1960s and 70s the United States became conscious of the limits of even its resources. Now with a little over a fifth of the world’s GNP, America was powerful but no longer dominant. Vietnam was the trauma and the catharsis but the recognition was bound to come in any event. Starting in the 70s, for the first time, the United States has had to conduct a foreign policy in the sense with which Europeans have always been familiar: as one country among many, unable either to dominate the world or escape from it, with the necessity of accommodation, maneuver, a sensitivity to marginal shifts in the balance of power, an awareness of that he “kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged” than his own State Department during these perilous years raises questions of motive, loyalty, and judgment. It could be argued that Kissinger’s 1982 speech constitutes an admission that he was, in fact, acting as a double agent for the British. cont...