Another Lame Duck Swan Song from Henry Kissinger

"For God's sake, how many swan songs can a lame duck deliver?"--Henry Kissinger quoted in Rolling Stone (1977)  regarding the number of farewell ceremonies he had to deliver.

Kissinger just released his latest pontification on how to achieve a "new world order" in his latest book called--wait for this--World Order.  You can read Henry's own press release in the Wall Street Journal or you can read Hillary Clinton praising this warmonger in the Washington Post.  If the book is anything like Hillary and Henry's previews, it should largely read like a piece of fiction.

The problem facing the world, according to Kissinger, is that the "economic system has become global, while the political structure of the world remains based on the nation-state."  He praises the Europe for setting out to "transcend" the state, but laments its reliance on "soft power" instead of state authority.  Well, here's fiction #1.  Europe has not overwhelming embraced ceding national sovereignty to a regional superstate, because it has yet to solve the problem of how to represent the various interests of the diverse nations and people within it.  Europe hasn't so much set out on a path for the European Union, so much as it's been politically engineered into place.  Kissinger avoids the fact that there has never been overwhelming democratic support for the EU or proposed North American Union, because such organizations rarely benefit the majority of people in those nations, as former US Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, acknowledges while chiding the middle class in one of his Financial Times editorials.  At least Hillary is honest enough to acknowledge the underlying theme of World Order--"our commitment to renovating and defending the world order"--though she couches that in the fiction that this will lead to "peace, progress, and prosperity."  As Summers points out, most folks ain't seein' much of that.

But seriously, just how many swan songs can this lame duck Kissinger croak out about the new world order?  It's hard to make an argument in support of the success of his policies--Vietnam, Angola, Chile, etc.--unless this goal of renovating the world order that Hillary seems committed to force America to do is in pursuit of an entirely different agenda than what is claimed.  However, that's a topic for some other day.

For now, at the age of 91, can't Henry Kissinger just please shut the fuck up and retire?