UK £5.10; Republic of Ireland €5.
10
Women of the year
Israel digs in for year-long Gaza war
3 Push south imminent 3 Top Hamas leaders in sights 3 Fragile seven-day truce shatters
NERI ZILBER — TEL AVIV
Israel is planning a campaign against
Hamas that will stretch for a year or
more, with the most intensive phase of
the ground offensive continuing into
early 2024, according to several people
familiar with the preparations.
The multiphase strategy envisages
Israeli forces, who are garrisoned inside
north Gaza, making an imminent push
deep into the south of the besieged Pal-
estinian enclave.
The goals include killing the three top
Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar,
Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa —
while securing “a decisive” military vic-
Out of the blue
COP guest list
nears 80,000
A digital display at the COP28 UN cli-
mate summit in Dubai yesterday as
hundreds of bankers, consultants and
lobbyists were poised to join the 200
government delegations shaping global
climate policy. A provisional list sug-
gests about 80,000 total attendees.
Bankers, including HSBC boss Noel
Quinn and Bank of America’s Brian
Moynihan, were among the most repre-
sented professions. Citigroup listed 26
staff. “I don’t expect [they] are here to
sit in on hours of climate negotiation,”
said Alex Scott of think-tank E3G.
Berlin pledge & World Bank alert page 8
Lex page 26
Pilita Clark: against the clock Life & Arts
Waterstones boss brings
listing plot back to life
Waterstones boss James Daunt has
returned to a plotline he first explored
five years ago, before the bookseller’s
sale to buyout group Elliott. As the
chain opens stores, defying predictions
of death by Amazon, Daunt has his eye
on a listing. Meanwhile, as owner of
Daunt Books, the second-biggest
independent UK bookseller, in addition
to his Waterstones role, he now
controls most independent high street
book sales in Britain.
Reading list i PAGE 20
Subscribe In print and online
www.ft.com/subscribenow Tel: 0800 028 1407
Mon-Fri: 7am - 6pm / Sat: 8am - 1pm
For the latest news go to
www.ft.com
© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2023
No: 41,496 ★
Printed in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin,
Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul,
Dubai
NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR
tory against the group’s 24 battalions
and underground tunnel network as
well as destroying its “governing capa-
bility in Gaza”.
“This will be a very long war . . . We’re
currently not near halfway to achieving
our objectives,” said one person familiar
with the Israeli war plans.
Israel’s overall strategy for Gaza is
flexible, with timing dictated by multi-
ple “clocks”, including operational
progress on the ground, international
pressure and opportunities to free
Israeli hostages, the people said.
A fragile week-long truce collapsed
yesterday as Israel and Hamas resumed
fighting, shattering a pause in hostilities
Thames Water’s £500mn injection of
‘equity’ revealed as loan from owners
GILL PLIMMER AND ROBERT SMITH
The owners of Thames Water lent the
£500mn that the utility later presented
as “new equity funding”, in a move that
highlights concerns over the financial
stability of Britain’s largest provider of
water and sewerage services.
The unregulated parent company of
Thames Water in March received a
£500mn loan from its shareholders —
charging 8 per cent annual interest — in
a deal that illustrates the complicated
structure of water company ownership.
Thames Water, which supplies about
25 per cent of the population in England,
presented the loan in March as
“£500mn of new equity funding from
its shareholders” to deliver a turn-
around plan. But the recapitalisation
involved the owners — which include
sovereign wealth, private equity and
STOCK MARKETS
that had enabled a mutual hostage-for-
prisoner swap between the two sides.
Israel said it was returning to battle to
“eliminate Hamas”.
The renewed high-intensity ground
operation will probably require a few
more months, taking it into the new
year, the people familiar with the prepa-
rations estimated. “This isn’t going to be
weeks,” said one person familiar with
US-Israel discussions over the war.
There will then be a “transition and
stabilisation” phase of lower military
intensity that could continue into late
2024, with the location of Israeli ground
forces during this phase still unclear.
Unlike previous Israeli military oper-
pension funds — providing a £515mn
convertible loan to Thames Water’s par-
ent entity, Kemble Water, according to
the company’s accounts.
Kemble then “cascaded” £500mn of
this borrowed money down the chain of
holding companies that own Thames
Water into the regulated utility.
The £515mn increase in debt at Kem-
ble has pushed the group’s consolidated
borrowings to more than £18bn, from
about £15bn in March 2022.
The arrangement will add to concerns
over the financial future of London’s
water provider. The company was
plunged into turmoil after Sarah Bent-
ley, chief executive, abruptly quit after a
boardroom row in June. Cathryn Ross, a
former head of regulator Ofwat, is act-
ing as interim head. The utility is now
under close watch by the government,
which is on standby for a temporary
World Markets
CURRENCIES
CRYPTO
COMMODITIES
SATURDAY 2 DECEMBER / SUNDAY 3 DECEMBER 2023
Can you afford a divorce?
Factoring in cost of living crisis
FT MONEY
25 global leaders
and influencers
FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE
The women of Louis Vuitton
Jennifer Connelly as muse
HTSI
ations and wars, one Israeli official sug-
gested there would not be a firm end
point. “The referee won’t blow the whis-
tle and it’s over,” they said.
A senior Israeli military officer said at
least 10 of 24 Hamas battalions had
been “hurt significantly”, with more
Inside than 50 mid-level commanders and an
3 UN warning estimated 5,000 fighters killed.
Page 8 Another person familiar with Israel’s ‘I’m on the side of the angels’
3 Lawrence
Freedman
war plans said the military still consid-
ers operations in northern Gaza to be
Lawyer David Sherborne
Page 15 incomplete. LUNCH WITH THE FT
3 Energean “Gaza City isn’t finished yet, nor fully
keeps lights on conquered. It’s probably 40 per cent
Page 17 done,” the person said. “For the north as
continued on page 8
Henry Kissinger’s legacy
Edward Luce
BIG READ
Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
nationalisation in case it collapses. It is
also seeking approval from Ofwat to
increase customer bills by about 40 per
cent — before inflation — by 2030.
Barry Gardiner, a Labour member of
the environment select committee, said
yesterday he had asked Thames Water
to appear before MPs to answer ques-
tions on the debt in light of the findings.
Dr Kate Bayliss, research associate
and water expert at Soas University of
London, said it was “outrageous that
both Thames Water and Ofwat led us to
believe that the company was getting
£500mn of new equity investment
when it was in fact just a loan”.
Thames Water said it was “extremely
fortunate to have such supportive
shareholders”. Ofwat said the group
“must address their operational short-
comings and strengthen their financial
resilience”.
GOVERNMENT BONDS
6 ★
Venezuela holds
referendum on
seizing oil-rich
Guyana region
Strongman Maduro instigates vote that
raises fears of an attack on neighbour
JOE DANIELS — BOGOTÁ
Venezuela has for more than 200 years
claimed rights over Essequibo, a vast
swath of the territory of neighbouring
Guyana. But only now has it chosen to
hold a referendum on taking over the
160,000 sq km of land.
The heightened interest in the
expanse of Amazon jungle springs in
part from its resource riches, including
offshore oil deposits that have since
2019 made Guyana the world’s fastest-
growing economy. Another reason lies
closer to home for Venezuela’s strong-
man leader, Nicolás Maduro: elections
next year.
The potential for Venezuela, an ally of
Russia, to follow the referendum with
an incursion into western-leaning Guy-
ana has raised concerns in the region.
Brazil this week said it had increased the
military presence in its northern areas,
which border both countries.
“On Sunday December 3 we will
respond to the provocations of Exxon,
the US Southern Command and the
president of Guyana with a people’s
vote,” Maduro said during his weekly
television broadcast on November 20.
Guyana fears this may be a pretext for
a land grab and has appealed to the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) to
halt the referendum — a move Caracas
has rejected, though its claim is largely
internationally unrecognised.
“This is a textbook example of annex-
ation,” Paul Reichler, an American law-
yer representing Guyana before the ICJ,
said in The Hague last month, claiming
that Venezuela is preparing a military
build-up in the Essequibo region in case
it wishes to enforce the outcome of the
referendum.
Caracas said its troops were carrying
out anti-illegal mining operations near
the territory, a sparsely populated
region that is home to around 200,000
Guyanese who speak English and indig-
enous languages, though little Spanish.
In Brazil, media reported that a sena-
tor for the Brazilian state of Roraima
said the defence minister had agreed to
his requests for military reinforcements
in the municipality of Pacaraima, a stra-
tegic location for access to Essequibo.
The defence ministry said: “Defence
actions have been intensified in the
northern border region of the country,
promoting a greater military presence.”
At the same time, analysts question
whether Venezuela will actually seek to
annex the territory. They argue the ref-
erendum is aimed at bolstering
Maduro’s support ahead of elections
that Venezuela agreed to hold in
exchange for relief from US sanctions.
“Political calculations are driving
Maduro to escalate tensions in an
attempt to stir up nationalist sentiment,
but those same political calculations
also limit his military options,” said
Theodore Kahn, director for the
Andean region at the consultancy Con-
trol Risks.
“An actual invasion would shut the
door to further negotiations with the US
and force the Biden administration to
reimpose oil sector sanctions.”
Maduro needs to mobilise party loyal-
FTWeekend 2 December/3 December 2023
INTERNATIONAL
Campaigning in Caracas last month
during a trial run for the referendum
Miguel Gutierrez/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
ject and gives [Maduro] a potential
excuse to declare a state of emergency
and avoid the election altogether.”
Maduro has yet to officially announce
his candidacy in the upcoming elec-
tions. However, he is widely expected to
run despite approval ratings of just 20
per cent, according to Datanálisis, amid
an economic and humanitarian crisis.
Maduro’s re-election in 2018 was
regarded by the US as fraudulent. Seek-
ing to entice him into having a “free and
fair” election this time, the US relaxed
sanctions on oil, gold and secondary
financial markets for six months.
Yet hopes of a political opening were
tempered when the government-
backed Supreme Justice Tribunal sus-
pended the results of the opposition pri-
mary, which was convincingly won by
María Corina Machado.
Machado, a pro-market former law-
maker, is currently banned from hold-
ing office, something she claims will not
stop her from running.
While the government and the frac-
tious opposition agree that the Esse-
quibo region is part of Venezuela’s terri-
tory, Machado has said the referendum
must be suspended. She advocates set-
tling the dispute at the ICJ.
The referendum will put five ques-
tions. One seeks approval for granting
all residents of the Essequibo region
Venezuelan citizenship and creating a
new state within Venezuela, while
another asks voters if they recognise the
jurisdiction of the ICJ on the matter.
In April, the ICJ ruled that it had juris-
diction to decide on the dispute, after a
request from Guyana in 2018 to confirm
200 km ists to defend two decades of socialist A US army the border that was drawn in arbitration
Atlantic Ocean
rule during which his party and its pred- in 1899 between Venezuela and what
Caribbean Sea Venezuelan ecessors have turned Caracas into an delegation was then British Guiana, a colony.
claim on international pariah and shattered its has visited A specialised US army delegation vis-
territorial state-run oil industry. ited Guyana this week and discussed
Stabroek Block waters
Luis Vicente León, who runs Caracas- Guyana and “processes to enhance both countries’
VENEZUELA based research firm Datanálisis, said the discussed military readiness and capabilities to
Geo
eo w
wn Guyana exclusive government was using the referendum respond to security threats”, said the US
Essequibo economic zone to reduce the perceived impact of a pre- ‘security embassy in Georgetown.
disputed G U YA N A election primary held by the opposition Since 2015, when ExxonMobil
threats’
COLOMBIA
territory FRENCH
in October despite government disap- announced it had found oil beneath the
GUIANA
SURINAME proval. The primary drew 2.4mn voters waters off the Essequibo coast, Caracas
Esse
to the polls, well above expectations. has adopted a more bellicose tone.
quibo riv
“It’s also a test of the government’s Exxon said: “Border issues are for gov-
er
capacity to engage its political machin- ernments and appropriate international
BRAZIL ery and mobilise voters,” León said. organisations to address”.
“Alongside that, it pressures the opposi- Additional reporting by Jamie Smyth in
Source: Venezuela’s National Organisation for Maritime Safety
tion to take a position on a sensitive sub- New York and Michael Pooler in São Paulo
8 ★
US economy
Powell urges caution on rate policy speculation US Congress
Fed chief tries to damp
suggestions that inflation
is firmly under control
COLBY SMITH — WASHINGTON
Jay Powell has sought to push back on
speculation that the Federal Reserve
had won its fight against inflation, even
as traders boosted bets that the US cen-
tral bank could start cutting interest
rates as early as next March.
In a speech yesterday the Fed chair
indicated that it was too soon to rule out
further rate rises or to start discussing
cuts. “It would be premature to con-
Supreme Court
First female
justice dies
Former US Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first
woman to sit on America’s most
powerful bench and a decisive figure
on issues including affirmative action
and abortion, has died aged 93.
O’Connor died yesterday in
Phoenix, Arizona, according to the
Supreme Court. She was appointed
by President Ronald Reagan in 1981
and sat on the court for more than 24
years until her retirement in 2006.
O’Connor “blazed a historic trail as
our nation’s first female justice”, chief
justice John Roberts said.
She was known as a conservative
moderate on the court, and proved to
be an influential swing vote willing to
side with liberal justices on matters
such as abortion and affirmative
action, issues that have undergone
dramatic shifts in the high court over
the past 18 months.
Stefania Palma, Washington
COP28
Germany pledges to pay into climate funds despite budget crisis
GUY CHAZAN — BERLIN
Germany’s foreign minister Annalena
Baerbock has said Berlin will stand by
all its international financial commit-
ments to tackle climate change, despite
a budget crisis that has thrown its 2024
spending plans into disarray.
“We will always be a reliable partner,”
Baerbock told the Financial Times
ahead of the UN’s COP28 climate sum-
mit in Dubai. “That’s why we agreed
within the federal government that we
will fulfil our international obligations.”
These included €6bn in international
climate finance that Germany had com-
mitted to provide by 2025, €2bn for the
UN’s Green Climate Fund, and Berlin’s
contribution to a new global fund to
address climate-related loss and dam-
age in developing countries, she added.
Baerbock was speaking as the Ger-
man government scrambled to plug a
€60bn hole in its public finances cre-
ated by a judgment by the country’s con-
Israel plans
year-plus
war in Gaza
Continued from page 1
a whole, it will probably require another
two weeks to a month.”
Israel says at least 1,200 people were
killed in the assault by Hamas on Octo-
ber 7, the deadliest in the Jewish state’s
history. More than 14,800 have been
killed in Gaza, according to health offi-
cials in the Hamas-controlled territory.
An Israeli ground offensive into south
Gaza, which up until now has been hit
only by sporadic air strikes, is expected
to begin in parallel. Israeli officials have
expels Santos
clude with confidence that we have
achieved a sufficiently restrictive stance
or to speculate on when policy might
ease,” he said, just before the start of a
“quiet period” preceding its final mone-
tary policy meeting of the year in two
weeks’ time.
After Powell’s remarks, yields on
policy-sensitive two-year Treasury
notes remained lower on the day, at
about 4.6 per cent, suggesting investors
were largely brushing off his warnings.
Traders in federal funds futures mar-
kets now put the odds of the Fed reduc-
ing rates as early as March 2024 at about
70 per cent. That is up from about
20 per cent a week ago.
stitutional court on November 15 that
plunged chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-
party coalition into crisis.
Judges struck down a 2021 move by
ministers to repurpose funds ear-
marked for dealing with the Covid-19
pandemic to fighting climate change.
The court ruled it violated the rules of
the “debt brake”, a strict constitutional
curb on new borrowing.
Baerbock said the best solution to the
fiscal problem was to reform the debt
brake, which limits the federal govern-
ment’s structural deficit to 0.35 per cent
of gross domestic product.
Germany’s first female foreign minis-
ter and one of its most prominent Green
politicians, Baerbock has long played a
big role in climate diplomacy.
She has been a strong advocate of the
idea of a “loss and damage fund” to com-
pensate developing countries for cli-
mate-related damage, an idea that
finally came to fruition at the start of
COP28 in Dubai on Thursday when Ger-
indicated that most of the Hamas lead-
ership, the bulk of its fighters and rocket
arsenal, and the majority of the remain-
ing Israeli hostages seized on October 7
are in the south.
US officials have warned Israel that its
approach to south Gaza has to be differ-
ent. On a visit to Tel Aviv on Thursday,
Antony Blinken, US secretary of state,
stressed that any such offensive “puts a
premium on protecting civilians” and
allows for increased humanitarian aid.
One of the people familiar with the
discussions said Washington had urged
Israel to have “a smaller military foot-
print” in the south, fewer civilian casu-
alties and “a clear humanitarian plan”.
Israeli officials have acknowledged
that the approach must change. “We
know we can’t conduct the same struc-
ture of operations in the south that we
did in the north,” said a person familiar
with Israel’s war plans. “There are now
2mn civilians [in the south], the method
FTWeekend
INTERNATIONAL
The Federal Open Market Committee
is preparing to again keep its bench-
mark policy rate steady at a 22-year
high of 5.25 to 5.5 per cent, a level it has
maintained since July. The Fed began a
historic drive to raise interest rates in
March 2022 in an effort to stamp out
surging inflation.
But even as the Fed continues to pause
its rate-rising campaign, the high degree
of uncertainty about the US inflation
outlook and concerns about easing con-
ditions in financial markets left officials
wary. They have refrained from signal-
ling more definitively that it has reached
a peak in interest rates and discussing
criteria for lowering borrowing costs.
World Bank warning
World Bank president Ajay Banga
warned that the hundreds of
millions of dollars committed to a
fund to help poor countries tackle
climate change would not take the
world “very far” towards covering
loss and damage.
Speaking at an FT Live event at
COP28 in Dubai, Banga said the
fact that $420mn had “already
showed up” on the first day of the
summit was “a good sign”. But he
added: “That is going to be the
beginning.”
Five countries plus the EU
pledged the seed money to the new
loss and damage fund on Thursday,
in an early success for negotiators.
In addition, Italy pledged €100mn
yesterday, while Canada set aside
$16mn. Aime Williams
of evacuating civilians en masse [like in
the north] cannot be duplicated.”
The southern offensive would focus
on Khan Younis, the second-most
important urban centre in Gaza and the
hometown of Sinwar and Deif, as well as
Rafah at the strip’s southernmost tip
bordering Egypt. The Gaza-Egypt bor-
der crossing and underground smug-
gling tunnels are “the main oxygen
channel for Hamas rebuilding its mili-
tary capabilities”, one of the people
familiar with Israel’s war plans said.
“It is the origin of Hamas turn-
ing . . . into a monster,” said another of
the people familiar with the plans, add-
ing that Gaza’s entire frontier with Egypt
had to be “taken care of”.
Israel yesterday started to issue more
localised evacuation orders for the civil-
ian population in southern Gaza, which
has swelled to as much as 80 per cent of
the strip’s population.
“We will make sure there are enough
‘safe zones’, we will warn them in
advance and call upon them to make an
effort [to evacuate] . . . for instance
1km to the north or west,” said one sen-
ior Israeli official. But the official
warned there were no “magical rules of
engagement” that would spare places
“where the enemy is located”.
A “transition and stabilisation” phase
of the war, which will follow the main
ground campaign, is intended to pre-
pare Gaza for a new postwar order with-
out Hamas.
For cuts to be considered, the Fed
needs to see several inflation reports
that corroborate this trend.
Powell yesterday affirmed this mes-
sage, warning at an event at Spelman
College in Georgia that the US central
bank was “prepared to tighten policy
further if it becomes appropriate to do
so”. But he made clear that the policy
was “well into restrictive territory” and
that the full effects of the Fed’s past
actions have yet to materialise.
In a discussion at the event, he
stressed that the Fed would be closely
monitoring economic data. “Let the
data reveal the appropriate path,” he
said. “While the lower inflation readings
many and the United Arab Emirates
announced they were both contributing
$100mn to the fund. Baerbock called
the announcements a “breakthrough”,
adding she was “really hopeful that
other big emitters like Saudi Arabia and
China will also show responsibility at
COP28 and contribute”.
The summit comes amid growing
concern about the speed of climate
change and the increasingly frequent
extreme weather events it is causing.
“With the war in Ukraine and the cri-
sis in the Middle East, the international
community is facing almost unprece-
dented challenges, and that’s why this
COP is so unbelievably important in
geostrategic terms,” Baerbock said.
Baerbock added Germany would use
COP28 to press for agreement on a grad-
ual phaseout of all fossil fuels, a position
likely to face opposition from oil and
gas-producing countries such as Russia
and Saudi Arabia. She said a phaseout
was needed to achieve the Paris climate
Truce ends
UN warns of humanitarian ‘tsunami’ in enclave
ANDREW ENGLAND
MIDDLE EAST EDITOR
A top UN official has warned that Gaza
risks being plunged into a humanitar-
ian “tsunami”, as a temporary truce
between Israel and Hamas ended and
Israeli forces resumed their offensive.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN’s
agency for Palestinian refugees, said the
population of Gaza had been weakened
so much that he feared many people
would start dying from diseases as well
as Israel’s bombardment of the enclave.
“I’m very worried about entering win-
ter, having seen the impact of the
siege . . . having seen the weakening of
the immunity of the people after such a
war, their deprivation and suffering,
that we might be on the eve of a perfect
kind of humanitarian catastrophe-tsu-
nami,” Lazzarini told the Financial
Times, speaking before the truce ended.
Israel has laid siege to Gaza since
launching an offensive against Hamas
after the militant group’s October 7
attack that killed about 1,200 people,
according to Israeli officials. Its air and
land assault on the strip, which Hamas
has controlled since 2007, has killed
more than 14,800 people, many of them
of the past few months are welcome,
that progress must continue if we are to
reach our 2 per cent objective,” he said.
Also yesterday, Austan Goolsbee,
president of the Chicago Fed and a vot-
ing member on the FOMC this year, said
so far there was “no evidence” that infla-
tion was going to stall at 3 per cent, and
instead forecast that it will fall back to
the Fed’s longstanding 2 per cent target.
As of October, the core personal
consumption expenditures price index,
the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, reg-
istered an annual pace of 3.5 per cent.
Additional reporting by Kate Duguid in
New York
Opinion The FT View
Sandra Day O’Connor in her
chambers in October 1981,
shortly after she became the
first female justice to serve
on the Supreme Court
David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images
goals. “Fossil fuels make the biggest con-
tribution to global warming,” she said.
Sultan al-Jaber, chief executive of the
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and
president of COP28, has said he will seek
a deal to triple renewable energy capac-
ity and double energy efficiency. But
Baerbock said that was not enough.
Only by combining those two goals with
a fossil fuel phaseout “can we hold off
the worst of the destruction”, she added.
Baerbock dismissed criticism of Jaber.
“Obviously countries which have built
their wealth on fossil fuels won’t wake
up one morning and give up that wealth
— until they have an alternative,” she
said, noting the UAE was also investing
heavily in renewables.
Baerbock said she was in “favour of
trying to overcome the old divisions in
climate diplomacy”.
“We have to try to bridge the gaps that
have always existed between north and
south, between industrial nations and
developing countries,” she added.
women and children, according to Pal-
estinian health officials.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce
last week to facilitate the release of hos-
tages captured during the October 7
attack and allow more aid into the
enclave, which is enduring severe short-
ages of food, water, fuel and medicine.
But fighting resumed yesterday.
Hamas and other Palestinian militant
factions said they had fired rockets at
towns across southern Israel, in retalia-
tion for renewed Israeli air strikes, with-
out claiming responsibility for the
launches from inside Gaza earlier in the
day. The Gaza health ministry said 109
A child is carried away injured after
an Israeli bombing raid yesterday
2 December/3 December 2023
Capitol Hill
after report
alleges ‘web’ of
theft and fraud
ALEX ROGERS — WASHINGTON
The House of Representatives voted
yesterday to expel George Santos from
the lower chamber of the US Congress
in a rare step that followed a damning
congressional report detailing the New
York Republican’s “complex web of
unlawful activity”.
His expulsion will trigger a special elec-
tion for a swing seat in a closely divided
House. Republicans can now only afford
to lose three votes to retain the ability to
pass legislation without Democratic
support.
The rebuke is only the sixth time in
US history that the House has ousted
one of its own members. The first three
were expelled for treason after they
fought for the Confederacy during the
civil war and the other two were con-
victed of bribery.
The vote was 311 to 114, above the
two-thirds threshold required. House
House told that tens of
thousands of dollars
were transferred to his
personal accounts
Speaker Mike Johnson and other
Republican leaders voted against San-
tos’s expulsion.
Santos, who represented a district in
Long Island, New York, is under federal
indictment but has not been convicted
of a crime. He has pleaded not guilty to
23 charges, including allegations that he
stole donor information and repeatedly
charged contributors’ credit cards with-
out their authorisation.
Santos told reporters on Thursday he
had decided not to seek re-election
because it would be an “uphill battle”
against the Republican party and the
press, but noted that he was only 35
years old and could one day return to
public service.
“There’s a point in time where you
just say enough is enough,” said Santos.
“It doesn’t mean that it’s goodbye for-
ever.”
Santos had beaten back previous
efforts to expel him but the House ethics
committee released a 56-page report in
mid-November saying he had tried to
“fraudulently exploit every aspect of his
House candidacy for his own personal
financial profit”.
His expenditures, it said, included
using campaign funds to pay for Botox —
and a limited liability company linked
to the campaign transferred tens of
thousands of dollars to his personal
accounts to make purchases at Hermès,
Sephora and OnlyFans, the online plat-
form used by sex workers.
By the time he was sworn in this year,
the media had reported that his claims
of working for Goldman Sachs and Citi-
group, and to have a degree from Baruch
College in New York, were false.
Santos admitted to having “embel-
lished” his CV, also saying he was a prac-
tising Catholic rather than, as he had
previously claimed, a “proud American
Jew”. He later told the New York Post
that he was “Jew-ish” due to his “mater-
nal family background”.
Additional reporting by Lauren Fedor and
James Politi in Washington
people had been killed in the renewed
Israeli assault.
Israeli military chiefs have indicated
that after focusing on northern Gaza
they are now preparing to extend the
offensive into the strip’s south where
more than 1mn people have fled.
Lazzarini said 80 per cent of the strip’s
population was now in the south. “If you
have an offensive with the same inten-
sity [in the south] . . . the fear is there
will also be a staggering number of peo-
ple who might be killed, especially with
this density of population.”
He said he was “completely shocked
and heartbroken” when he visited Gaza
last week. At a centre where 35,000 peo-
ple had sought sanctuary, he spoke to a
family of six who had lived in the same
clothes for 50 days. “They feel stripped
of their dignity,” Lazzarini said of those
forced to live there. They had to queue
for hours to use overflowing toilets.
More aid reached Gaza during the
truce, with at least 200 trucks supposed
to be entering the strip daily, far less
than the 500 a day before the war. A
return to full-scale hostilities “will pre-
cipitate and accelerate large-scale
dying”, Lazzarini said.
See Opinion
10 ★ FTWeekend 2 December/3 December 2023

FT BIG READ. POLITICS

To some he was a diplomatic wunderkind, to others an amoral sociopath. But what eventually marked
the late statesman out was his acumen as a consultant with the ear of presidents and potentates.
By Edward Luce

The many
legends of
Henry
Kissinger

I His counsel
t is hard to recall a figure whose
death has evoked more polarised
reactions than that of Henry Kiss-
inger. The last of America’s grand
strategists was as reviled as he was
adulated — often by the same people.
Many prominent Americans who as
students in the 1970s loathed the Viet-
nam war and the secret bombing of
Cambodia, were only too happy to
appear at one of Kissinger’s centenarian
parties this year. Kissinger’s rehabilita-
tion owes as much to the passage of time
as the evolution of his critics.
Kissinger was vilified as having blood
on his hands by writers such as Christo-
pher Hitchens and Seymour Hersh.
Within minutes of his death on Wednes-
day evening, Rolling Stone, the counter-
culture magazine of Kissinger’s era,
published an obituary under the head-
line: “Henry Kissinger, war criminal
beloved by America’s ruling class,
finally dies.”
Much of the world, including China’s
president, Xi Jinping, mourned the
passing of a global statesman. “Dr Kiss-
inger will always be remembered and
missed by the Chinese people,” said Xi.
Among the mourners was Antony
Blinken, the US secretary of state, who
was a guest at Kissinger’s New York
100th birthday party in June.
Both sides of history
Figuring out whether Kissinger was a
diplomatic wunderkind or a sociopathic
amoralist is a fool’s errand. It is possible
to be both. Many of the actions that
earned him notoriety were also moves
on the geostrategic chessboard.
The decision he and Richard Nixon
took to back Pakistan’s brutal suppres-
sion of the uprising in what became
Bangladesh is high up on any charge
sheet against him. Yet that decision was
also bound up with Pakistan’s role as the
secret conduit for America’s opening to
China — a cloak and dagger operation at
which Kissinger excelled.
Bringing China in from the cold was a
blow to Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union
during a key phase in the cold war. Stok-
ing Moscow’s paranoia of a two-front
threat — from China in the east and Nato
in the west — helped to accelerate Kiss-
inger’s project of detente with the USSR.
Within weeks of Nixon’s visit to China in
1972, Brezhnev invited America’s presi-
dent to a summit.
Other acts, notably the carpet bomb-
ing of Cambodia, which spawned the
rise of the Khmer Rouge, one of the 20th
century’s most genocidal regimes, are
harder to assuage with diplomatic logic.
Partly by seeming capable of anything,
Nixon aimed to terrify North Vietnam
to the negotiating table. Tens of thou-
sands of Cambodian deaths were not
enough to wring concessions from
Hanoi or blunt its communist insur-
gency. It is hard to reconcile how Nixon
could have been elected in 1968 promis-
ing a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam
war yet taken five years and countless
deaths to get there.
Kissinger played a devious game of
aiming for “peace with honour” while
Above: Richard simultaneously broadening the war to
Nixon appointed the rest of south-east Asia. When Amer-
Kissinger as ica finally withdrew its troops in 1973,
secretary of earning Kissinger the most controver-
state while sial Nobel Peace Prize in history, he fore-
keeping him in cast that there would be a “decent inter-
the role of US val” between America’s departure and
national the fall of Saigon. He was right; the Viet-
security adviser. nam civil war lasted another two years.
Below: Kissinger Kissinger and Nixon purchased that
with President interval with indecency.
Xi Jinping in The argument over Kissinger’s place
2015, when he in history has been going on for decades
was leading the — he died 47 years after leaving office.
China-US two- That debate is likely to rage on, not least
track dialogue because today’s geopolitical threats find
in Beijing — Jason strong echoes in Kissinger’s 1970s.
Lee/Getty Images; Bettmann
Joe Biden is confronted by a recon-
ciled Russia and China acting in concert
against America’s so-called rules-based
international order. The spectre of war
in the Middle East, which Kissinger
tried, with some success, to contain
through his shuttle diplomacy, is as real
now as when he was in office.
Allegations of US hypocrisy — paying
lip service to western values while
indulging strongmen that run friendly
countries — are as familiar today as
when Kissinger was in charge. Although
elected, India’s Narendra Modi and
Many of the Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu are the
rough equivalents of Pakistan’s Yahya
actions that Khan and Indonesia’s Suharto. Euro-
earned him pean fear of Vladimir Putin’s Russia is
nearly as acute today as their cold war
notoriety dread of the Soviet Union.
were also It is because Kissinger faced compara-
bly thorny challenges that his counsel
moves was sought by every president, includ-
on the ing Biden, since he left public service.
geostrategic He was simultaneously speaking to
chessboard
Putin, Xi, other world leaders, and their
predecessors.
Yet there is a limit to what today’s
Washington strategists can apply from
Kissinger’s legacy. He was a one-of-a-
kind public impresario who is unlikely
to be seen again.
Unique qualities
There are three qualities to Kissinger’s
career that are likely to remain unique.
The first was the double-dealing nature
of his meteoric rise. Although Nixon and
he were virtual strangers, Kissinger was
his first appointment after his 1968 vic-
tory. His role in funnelling intelligence
on Vietnam to the Nixon campaign from
Lyndon Johnson’s Paris peace talks was
seminal. Unbeknown to LBJ’s negotia-
tors, Kissinger was playing both sides of
the field.
He also offered his services to Hubert
Humphrey, Nixon’s Democratic oppo-
nent in the 1968 election. Kissinger’s
juggling skills were preternatural. It
would be next to impossible in today’s
partisan Washington to make yourself
available to both of America’s parties.
Some people attributed Nixon’s choice
of Kissinger to the likely trivial titbits
that he secretly passed on from Paris. In
practice, Nixon admired Kissinger’s for-
eign policy brain. But he also greatly val-
ued Kissinger’s talent for subterfuge.
“One factor that had most convinced me
of Kissinger’s credibility was the length
to which he went to protect his secrecy,”
Nixon wrote in his memoir.
Kissinger’s second unique quality was
the outsize power that he wielded. It is
hard to imagine a foreign policy adviser
in today’s Washington having anything
close to the sway that Kissinger
amassed. It came partly by accident.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, it
was Nixon, not Kissinger, who set the
foreign policy goals during his first
term, including the opening to China.
After Nixon was re-elected in 1972, he
was increasingly besieged by the Water-
gate scandal. The following two years,
when Nixon was fighting for his political
survival, and increasingly taking to the
bottle, were the apogee of Kissinger’s
power.
The moment of peak Kissinger was
when he put US forces on Defcon 3 — the
highest state of peacetime nuclear alert
— after the Soviets threatened to insert
forces into the Israel-Egypt war. Nixon,
who was in the White House living quar-
ters, and probably the worse for wear,
was almost certainly not consulted
before Kissinger’s late evening escala-
tion. Nixon had appointed Kissinger as
secretary of state while keeping him in
the role of US national security adviser.
This combination had not happened
before, or since. As the joke goes, the
only time the two roles have operated in
harmony was when Kissinger held them
both. But Kissinger’s plenipotentiary
phase only happened because the presi-
dent was missing in action. It is incon-
ceivable that Jake Sullivan, today’s
national security adviser, or Blinken,
could declare Defcon 3 without asking
Biden.
Kissinger’s third unique quality is the
least appreciated: his ability to be all
things to all people. He is widely seen as
the paragon of the school of foreign pol-
icy realism, which aims for a global bal-
ance of power based on US national
interests. This is distinct from the more
natural American tradition of seeking to
remake the world in its own image. In
practice, Kissinger’s viewpoint was end-
lessly malleable.
In the 1976 presidential election, Kiss-
inger was depicted as a menace by con-
servatives and liberals alike. Jimmy
Carter, the Democratic candidate,
branded Kissinger as an amoral opera-
tor whose methods were covert and
secretive. Carter’s words were scripted
by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger’s
longtime rival, and the next national
security adviser. Ronald Reagan, who
challenged Kissinger’s boss, Gerald
Ford, for the Republican nomination,
accused Kissinger of appeasing the Sovi-
ets. Ford, who only just staved off the
Reagan challenge, promptly banned the
word “detente” and made it clear that he
would not reappoint Kissinger if he won
the election.
Yet after Ford lost, Kissinger the jug-
gler was not discouraged. He repeatedly
offered his services to Carter as a diplo-
matic envoy, which Brzezinski made
sure Carter turned down. After Reagan
seized the 1980 Republican nomination,
Kissinger repackaged himself as a cold
war hawk. Reagan was unconvinced
and did not offer him a job. Either
way, versatility, not consistency, was
Kissinger’s hallmark.
Sage for sale
Kissinger put that quality to commer-
cial use in the second half of his career —
as a highly remunerated foreign policy
consultant. He invented the lucrative
field of foreign policy advisory services
with the 1982 launch of Kissinger Asso-
ciates in partnership with his former
colleague Brent Scowcroft. Among
Kissinger’s clients were American
Express, Rio Tinto, Lehman Brothers,
Disney and JPMorgan, and a roster of
foreign clients.
The key to Kissinger’s ability to
charge high monthly retainers was his
regular presence in the corridors of
power. Kissinger had easy access to
every president, whether they were
Democratic, including Bill Clinton,
Barack Obama and Biden, or the Repub-
licans George Bush Sr and Jr, and Donald
Trump. Kissinger parlayed his presi-
dential access into high consultancy
was sought fees. It was both a conflict of interest and
by every a brilliant business model.
Keeping that business humming,
president, which Kissinger did until the final
including months of his life, meant curbing his
sharp analytical brain. Kissinger’s pub-
Biden, since lic commentary, which he continued to
he left provide through books, op-eds and
public speeches, were packaged in a way that
did not jeopardise his access to the
service White House, the Kremlin or Zhong-
nanhai.
This marked him out from his peers.
Both Brzezinski and Scowcroft, for
example, were biting critics of Bush Jr’s
2003 invasion of Iraq and his global war
on terror. Kissinger supported both.
Although Trump, the next Republican
president, was Bush Jr’s foreign policy
opposite, Kissinger declined to criticise
him either.
He was a realist when he needed to be,
and a neoconservative when the winds
changed. In public at least, Kissinger
subordinated his geopolitical acuity to
his business interests. America pro-
duced other great cold war strategists,
such as George Kennan, Dean Acheson,
Brzezinski and James Baker. What
marked Kissinger out was his brilliance
as a global consultant.
By any standard, not just Washing-
ton’s, he was also very funny. The list of
Kissinger witticisms competes with that
of Mark Twain or Groucho Marx. “The
illegal we do immediately,” he said. “The
unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Kissinger’s knack for self-deprecation
was also in a class of its own. “I have not
The 1970s faced such a distinguished audience
bombings of since dining alone in the Hall of Mirrors
Cambodia killed at Versailles,” he told a group of digni-
tens of taries when he was secretary of state. He
thousands of worked hard on such one-liners.
people and led “Nobody will ever win the battle of the
to the rise of the sexes,” he once said. “There is too much
Khmer Rouge fraternising with the enemy.” Most
William Lovelace/Evening famously Kissinger observed that power
Standard/Getty Images
is a great aphrodisiac.
He might have added that power is
also a great money machine. It came as
little surprise that Kissinger was on the
board of Theranos, the Silicon Valley
blood-testing company run by Eliza-
beth Holmes, that went bankrupt after
being exposed as fraudulent. By that
stage of Kissinger’s life, his benefit to
Kissinger Holmes was hard to distinguish from
the photo-op value he lent to US presi-
parlayed his dential candidates, or a Chinese foreign
presidential minister. It enhanced their credibility.
That, rather than his dexterity as a
access diplomat, will be the enduring puzzle of
into high the Kissinger legend. Among the ava-
lanche of statements on Wednesday
consultancy night, Putin described Kissinger as an
fees. It was “outstanding diplomat, a wise and far-
both a sighted statesman”.
What did Kissinger value? Nobody in
conflict of today’s America could emulate such a
interest and career path. He was an academic prod-
igy, and an entrepreneurial statesman,
a brilliant who spent the second half of his life
business monetising his brand. He could have
spoken truth to power. He chose to
model massage both.