Henry Kissinger interview: ‘I don’t see the wisdom there once was’

Henry Kissinger doesn’t believe in retirement. At 91, having had a heart-valve operation three months ago, he is nonetheless publishing a book entitled World Order. As I happened to be interviewing him about it on 11 September, I asked him about his memories of 13 years ago. ‘I was in Frankfurt addressing a business group,’ he recalled in that voice of his that sounds like gravel has found its way into your car’s exhaust pipe. ‘A member of the audience had just asked a question when someone came on to the stage to say that he had an important announcement to make. I said that that may be, but I wanted to answer the question first, which I did, before the man said that New York had been attacked. It was about 2 p.m. German time and I needed to go next to Beijing, but my plane was grounded. For the first few hours there were theories that the attacks had been undertaken by South American drugs cartels or other organisations, but the suicidal nature of them led me immediately to assume that this had emanated from the Middle East.’

Fast, decisive and ultimately accurate perceptions are Kissinger’s forte, and the reason his global clients still pay Kissinger Associates millions of dollars a year for his counsel. Yet his offices on Park Avenue and 51st Street in Manhattan are more functional than plush; for work rather than schmoozing.

The previous night I had seen the searing new documentary The Fall of Saigon in an Upper West Side cinema, and so I asked him how those chaotic days in April 1975 had affected his worldview. ‘I think a very great deal about the trauma of Saigon,’ he said. ‘It’s something that must not happen again. America has fought five wars since 1945 and has gained its objectives in only one of them, the Gulf War.