Few sounds are more terrifying than the hum of a squadron of B-52 Stratofortresses. It begins low, distant, as the roughly 80-ton aircraft come into hearing range before building, slowly reaching higher and higher pitches as they approach. And then the hum explodes into a cacophony of destruction.

For many, it is among the last sounds they ever hear. That was certainly the case for tens of thousands of Cambodian civilians murdered in Operation Freedom Deal, an American military campaign carried out between May 1970 and August 1973 under the direction of the late Henry Kissinger.

In the wake of Mr Kissinger’s death, the long-running controversy surrounding the former United States National Security Advisor and Secretary of State has bubbled to the fore.

Rolling Stone magazine headlined their story on Mr Kissinger’s death with “Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America’s ruling class, finally dies.” Chile’s ambassador to the United States called Mr Kissinger “a man whose historical brilliance could never conceal his profound moral wretchedness.”

Dr Sophal Ear, a Cambodian-American political scientist who fled the country’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, described Mr Kissinger’s legacy in Cambodia as one of “deaths and continuing unexploded ordnances littering the country, the physical maiming, loss of human capital, and the mental health toll that millions suffer.”

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Yet, many world leaders gushed over Mr Kissinger last week. Boris Johnson called him “a giant of diplomacy and strategy – and peace-making.” Tony Blair said he was “in awe” of Mr Kissinger, who he claimed was motivated by “a genuine love of the free world and the need to protect it”. China’s ambassador to the United States stated that Mr Kissinger’s death was “a tremendous loss for both our countries and the world”.

The question of whether Mr Kissinger ought to be remembered as a great statesman or a wretched war criminal is hotly disputed. His admirers point to a long list of achievements in international affairs. His trips to China in the early 1970s paved the way for President Nixon’s groundbreaking 1972 summit with Mao Zedong and the subsequent formalisation of US-China relations, ending 23 years of hostility and creating an anti-Soviet alliance.

His shuttle diplomacy, travelling between Tel Aviv, Damascus, and Cairo to orchestrate negotiations to bring the 1973 Arab–Israeli War to a permanent end, is credited with establishing a lasting peace between Egypt and Israel.

He negotiated nuclear arms limitation treaties with the Soviet Union, and he led the Nixon administration’s internal deliberations on what to do with the United States’ offensive bioweapons programs.

These achievements matter little to his harshest critics. As Anthony Bourdain put it: “Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands […] Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”

Perhaps the most articulate argument for treating Mr Kissinger as a war criminal came in Christopher Hitchen’s 2001 book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, in which Mr Hitchens presented a prosecutorial argument alleging Mr Kissinger’s involvement in war crimes and human rights violations beyond Cambodia, across southeast Asia, Latin America, and even in Cyprus.

In Latin America, as Secretary of State, Mr Kissinger played a role in the establishment of Operation Condor, a United States-financed campaign of clandestine state repression and terrorism carried out by the intelligence agencies of "southern cone" Latin American states between 1975 and 1983. Operation Condor resulted in the murder of as many as 80,000 suspected leftists and the taking of hundreds of thousands of political prisoners.

Prior to Operation Condor, Mr Kissinger had played a role in the Nixon administration’s support of a botched coup in Chile in 1970 and subsequent support for forces in Chilean politics determined to undermine the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Allende was eventually deposed and murdered in the 1973 coup d’état, which established the murderous regime of Augusto Pinochet – a key participant in Operation Condor.

While these seem to be contradictory narratives, there are overlapping elements. Mr Kissinger’s admirers often acknowledge his role in Operations Freedom Deal and Condor, but characterise his actions as those of a virtuoso foreign policy "realist" making difficult choices in impossible circumstances.

And his critics are only too happy to acknowledge Mr Kissinger’s greatness as a titan of American foreign policy.

Both seem to see Mr Kissinger as a colossus astride the Cold War and the history of the 20th century. And while both have legitimate points to make about his legacy, his hands both stained by blood and calloused by the hard work of Cold War diplomacy, I cannot get on board with this point of agreement.

I would go so far as to say that Mr Kissinger may be the most overrated political figure of modern times. His contributions, for example, to opening relations with China and reaching détente with the Soviet Union were functional, not conceptual – the motivation and strategy on both counts came from President Nixon.

The impetus for the carpet bombing of Cambodia also came from President Nixon. And, while Mr Kissinger was aware of and approved of Operation Condor, it was not his idea, and he played a minor role in its design and implementation.

As an academic, as Professor Mario Del Pero put it in 2015, “he wasn’t a very deep or sophisticated thinker”. His work did little to challenge the intellectual vogues of the 1950s and 60s, instead dressing up conventional ideas in tortured but impressive language, and once in government, he displayed a deeply black-and-white vision of the world incommensurate with its complexity.

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If he had a single great talent, it was as a bureaucratic warrior. His capacity to amass power and control in his own office was extraordinary. But what does that leave us with? A genius war criminal? A genius statesman? Try a vastly overrated bureaucrat.

Far from the mastermind of 1970s American warfare and diplomacy, Mr Kissinger was a highly effective cog in a deeply controversial and often murderous US government. And that, not the prevalent hagiography of recent days, is how he should be remembered: a bloodied cold warrior like so many of the era and a man made by his times, not the other way around.