So, this was a thing:
http://www.bbc.com/news/29441281
Or more particularly (thanks to the good folks, and I mean that, at the National Security Archive -- great resource if you're looking at post-'45 US topics):
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB487/
Yes, this is Henry being hyperbolic and other people nodding their heads at his fits of temper. I particularly recommend Documents 4 and 5 which involve anonymous high-level staffers patiently laying out between the lines why Kissinger losing his shit because Cuba had piddled on his geopolitical cornflakes in Southern Africa could trigger World War III. (Certainly its argument #94735281 about him not being a cold-blooded chessmaster of international relations but instead a petulant schoolboy with a Metternich poster on his bedroom wall.) But Henry being hyperbolic could go a long way -- Cambodia anybody? I ran across this working on a relatively-deep-dive Ford Wins TL (a deliberate distraction from the Big Project, working in parallel usually helps my productivity.) I suspect, in reality, that a combination of Bush's pragmatism and Rumsfeld's desire not to have anything happen whose circumstances were far enough out of his control that they might make him look bad would rein Kissinger in. But it's not a guarantee. And certainly in '77 there were provocations of Henry's temper like Shaba I in Zaire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaba_I) and the escalating Angolan-South African border war in southeast Angola (which cut right at the big domino in Kissinger's revived domino theory of African politics "first they came for Rhodesia, etc.") which could set him off even further. Kissinger's male menopause -- trending towards the end of his career, losing the illusion of complete dominance over US policy that had sustained him so long, being beaten at Bureaucracy by people like Rumsfeld, etc. -- made him a wounded animal and those are the most dangerous.
Thoughts?
http://www.bbc.com/news/29441281
Or more particularly (thanks to the good folks, and I mean that, at the National Security Archive -- great resource if you're looking at post-'45 US topics):
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB487/
Yes, this is Henry being hyperbolic and other people nodding their heads at his fits of temper. I particularly recommend Documents 4 and 5 which involve anonymous high-level staffers patiently laying out between the lines why Kissinger losing his shit because Cuba had piddled on his geopolitical cornflakes in Southern Africa could trigger World War III. (Certainly its argument #94735281 about him not being a cold-blooded chessmaster of international relations but instead a petulant schoolboy with a Metternich poster on his bedroom wall.) But Henry being hyperbolic could go a long way -- Cambodia anybody? I ran across this working on a relatively-deep-dive Ford Wins TL (a deliberate distraction from the Big Project, working in parallel usually helps my productivity.) I suspect, in reality, that a combination of Bush's pragmatism and Rumsfeld's desire not to have anything happen whose circumstances were far enough out of his control that they might make him look bad would rein Kissinger in. But it's not a guarantee. And certainly in '77 there were provocations of Henry's temper like Shaba I in Zaire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaba_I) and the escalating Angolan-South African border war in southeast Angola (which cut right at the big domino in Kissinger's revived domino theory of African politics "first they came for Rhodesia, etc.") which could set him off even further. Kissinger's male menopause -- trending towards the end of his career, losing the illusion of complete dominance over US policy that had sustained him so long, being beaten at Bureaucracy by people like Rumsfeld, etc. -- made him a wounded animal and those are the most dangerous.
Thoughts?