Trump fired Kissinger!

This broken clock named Trump has had the right time so often lately that I'm wondering if it isn't really ticking. He's the only American President in living memory to have no use for Henry Kissinger. Right before Thanksgiving, there was a purge of neoliberal ghouls from the Defense Policy Board, clearing the way for new appointments to carry out a new mission in the Department of Defense. These people are Trump loyalists, yes, but in this context that's a good thing. Their loyalty to Trump will preserve them from shitlib pressure to keep the forever wars going, and Trump's new Defense Department is bringing troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

To the surprise of literally nobody who knows who Henry Kissinger is, he was one of the key impediments to doing what Trump is doing right now abroad. In this Washington Post op-ed from 2011, he-like all good liberals-presents himself as being for something he's really against. He talks about wanting to withdraw from Afghanistan, but requiring four "tests" that must be met, which can never be met in these material conditions:

For negotiation to turn into a viable exit strategy, four conditions must be met: a cease-fire; withdrawal of all or most American and allied forces; the creation of a coalition government or division of territories among the contending parties (or both); and an enforcement mechanism.

I say "cannot be met" because Afghanistan is not only hard to conquer, it's hard to unite. Its history has not been kind to its conquerors - even the famed Mongols who were the exception to the fate of its conquerors are now the Hazaras living slave-like lives there for several hundred years, so even they were conquered by it. What every single Mughal emperor and the Durrani Empire failed to do, what the Mongols and Britain and America failed to do, what the Soviet Union failed to do, is not going to be accomplished by the Northern Alliance-turned-national-government suddenly playing footsie with the Taliban. The incentive to negotiation is miniscule, and has been even before 9/11. Whichever coalition of tribes is ascendant will call itself the national government, as the Taliban did before 9/11 and the Northern Alliance does now. But the entire country is highly defensible and the borders are porous, so opposition tribes near international borders can always be sustained by neighboring countries seeking influence and a buffer statelet on their borders. Whichever one is not ascendant at any given time will not have an incentive to compromise with the "national government" because it can hole itself up in its statelet, relatively safe from being completely overthrown. The full might of America could not help the Northern Alliance end the Taliban, and the reverse is also true as the Taliban could not end the Northern Alliance with the full help of Pakistan's ISI. And without the creation of a coalition government and an enforcement mechanism, this proposed withdrawal is and will always be stillborn.

What's more, Kissinger knows this. He set up our peace and departure efforts to fail on purpose, because he wants us there forever but cannot admit so publicly without stepping on several neoliberal psy-ops along the way. Afghanistan is very close to Russia and China, and a promontory in the backyard of Central Asia where they both seek to exercise influence. Sticking some troops there gives America a way to exercise influence in their backyard, which is why Russia and China both hastened to support Venezuela during the latest Bay of Piglets there; it's a way of doing unto America what America does unto them.

The reality is that millions of killed and displaced Afghanis is not a price worth paying to further the goals of American imperialism; indeed our empire must end for the good of the world. The line Henry Kissinger took in 2011, however, was the line emanating out of the Pentagon until this purge. These DoD officials went to the axe talking about "conditions not being safe for a withdrawal," but to the axe they went all the same. Which is important; the Trump administration has finally learned that personnel is policy. You can improbably win an election, but if you appoint the same hacks that ran the show under the old guard, not a whole lot will change. So Trump has finally fired those hacks, in order to finally end the hack consensus governing Washington. I think it came too late to be as effective as it could have been, but the last couple months of the Trump administration will probably be the best, just like the first couple months were the worst.

Even if Trump isn't withdrawing all the troops from Afghanistan (and I think that's the thing you say to give yourself political cover as you withdraw all the troops from Afghanistan), this purge will be a major blow against the empire in its own right. Henry Kissinger is like J. Edgar Hoover, an untouchable bipartisan relic that never goes away whoever becomes President. Hoover was bulletproof because he had dirt on every incoming President. Kissinger and the foreign policy represents a liability to the American voting public, but his eager defense of American bourgeois interests abroad has made him bulletproof. Until now; Trump as a Bonapartist represents a part of the smaller and petty bourgeoisie turning against the big bourgeoisie, and Kissinger appeals to the Hillaries of the world trying to keep the world safe for business more than the hard-nosed businessmen just trying to make a buck at all costs. That's why he kept his job at the reins of American foreign policy until now, despite being a comic book supervillain behind various things like the alliance with China and Cambodia, the repression of Iranians under the Pahlavi regime, and the Latin American fascist death squads of Operation Condor, just to name three.

Could Biden hire him back? Sure; he could also ask someone to box him right in the gonads, or appoint Neera Tanden to get bullied to death by a turtle on her futile way to the OMB. He could do these things, and apparently is occasionally stupid enough to do these things, but there is a much greater political cost to hiring Henry Kissinger than there is to not firing Henry Kissinger. Inertia is always cheaper. But now if Biden wants Kissinger back telling the Pentagon what to plan for, he will have to get him through Congress. I just don't know if that's possible anymore; he's radioactive to populists in both parties now. I think Biden will have to restrict himself to asking his opinion in private phonecalls.