It had become ally as well as enemy, trading partner as well as target. The Free World had been unmasked for many Americans as a motley collection of repressive, terrorist regimes. Since the days of Acheson and Dulles the US had fought the Cold War under the banner of liberalism and freedom. Kissinger, the student of Metternich, has understood the dangers of this. When nations profess morality some people at least will expect them to adhere to it.
Moral inhibitions are an impossible strait jacket.
Henry Kissinger has understood that the rhetoric of peace is both more popular and more practical than the rhetoric of freedom. It is a world of the Peace of Westphalia where each sovereign is free to profess what he wishes within his own territory except to profess an ideology such as national liberation or socialism which threatens to undermine the system. Established socialist regimes, as we have seen, are accorded Westphalian treatment. Repressive regimes which are prepared to use massive brutality to suppress democratic social change no longer need to be the basis of embarrassment and apology. On Southern Africa, Brazil, Vietnam the position of the United States is now clear.