Kissinger’s death leaves mixed legacy in Southeast Asia

From green-lighting Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor to securing “peace with honour” in Vietnam _ and earning a Nobel Peace Prize for those efforts, few have cast a greater shadow over Southeast Asia

Henry Kissinger with Le Duc Tho in Paris in January 1973. Picture: Getty Images

For a man whose influence once loomed so large over Southeast Asia, Henry Kissinger’s death this week, aged 100, made barely a ripple in the region – perhaps reflecting the mixed legacy of someone hailed by some as a foreign policy genius and others as a warmonger.

From green-lighting Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor to securing “peace with honour” in Vietnam – and earning a Nobel Peace Prize for those efforts – few have cast a greater shadow over the region.

Yet the Singapore government was almost alone in officially marking Kissinger’s death this week. Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan mourned the loss of the “pre-eminent statesman of our time” and a “consistent advocate” for the city-state.

The US secretary of state to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford enjoyed a close relationship with prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and is credited with helping Singapore bed down its economy by using it as a repair hub during the Indo-China wars.

Kishore Mahbubani, a former senior Singaporean diplomat and distinguished research fellow at the National University of Singapore, said Kissinger’s policies also helped shore up other Southeast Asian non-communist states that might otherwise have become “dominoes”.

“Lee Kuan Yew appreciated the fact that what Kissinger was trying to do was ensure those non-communist countries would not collapse and fall as a result of what was happening in Indo-China,” Professor Mahbubani told Bloomberg.

“In some ways I would say history has vindicated his policies in Indo-China.”

Millions of people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – countries still littered with unexploded ordnance – would disagree. While the Vietnam War “bought Singapore 10 years to get its house in order, the cost of that was borne by Cambodians and Laotians who were bombed, and the Vietnamese who were caught up in the war”, NUS political scientist Ja-Ian Chong said.

“Kissinger also gave the green light for West Pakistan forces to brutalise East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. That’s all part of his legacy that people in Singapore are either unaware of or happy to overlook.”

Kissinger’s 1973 peace prize for ending US involvement in the Vietnam War was deeply controversial. His fellow awardee, North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho, declined the prize and two Nobel committee members resigned amid concern over the bombing campaigns of North Vietnam and Cambodia.

The 1969 Cambodian bombardment and later invasion, aimed at destroying Viet Cong sanctuaries, killed tens of thousands of people and are blamed for setting the conditions for the 1975 rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. More than a million Vietnamese died during the war, from which the US ultim­ately was forced to withdraw in April 1975.

It was in the shadow of that humiliation that Kissinger and Ford greenlighted Jakarta’s invasion of East Timor, prefacing a 24-year occupation in which 100,000 Timorese died.

Kissinger long denied having done so but declassified US documents suggest he and Ford gave Indonesia’s Suharto the go-ahead to invade the former Portuguese colony during a December 6, 1975, visit to Jakarta. Indonesia did so the next day.

In the wake of communist North Vietnam’s victory, and amid fears of communist expansion across Southeast Asia, Suharto was seen as a key regional bulwark against communism.

So revered did Kissinger remain in Jakarta circles, president Abdurrahman Wahid appointed him a political adviser in 2000.

Yet Dino Patti Djalal, a former ambassador to the US, says the fact Jakarta has not marked Kissinger’s death should come as no surprise. “Indonesia saw him as someone it could work with, certainly not as an adversary,” he said. “I know Kissinger is a towering figure in the US and much of the Western world, but he is not seen that way in our part of the world.”

Additional reporting: Dian Septiari