His consulting company said that Henry Kissinger, the diplomat with the thick glasses and gravelly voice who led foreign policy as the US pulled out of Vietnam and broke down barriers with China, died Wednesday. At age one hundred, he was.
Under the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger wielded an unprecedented impact on international affairs through his commanding demeanor and covert manipulation of power.
In doing so, he received both censure and the Nobel Peace Prize. His name continues to elicit fervent discourse regarding foreign policy landmarks from decades ago.
During the tumultuous Watergate era, when the politically astute diplomat assumed a position analogous to that of co-president to the weakened Nixon, Kissinger’s influence increased.
Kissinger later wrote,
“My vanity was undoubtedly aroused” about his growing influence. However, the prevailing sentiment was an apprehension of impending disaster.
Kissinger, a Jew who fled Nazi Germany with his family when he was a teenager, established himself as a respected statesman in his later years through the delivery of speeches, the provision of counsel to Republicans and Democrats, and the management of a global consulting firm.
He appeared on numerous occasions at the White House of President Donald Trump. However, as Nixon-era documents and recordings gradually emerged over time, they unveiled revelations often in the words of Kissinger himself that occasionally portrayed him negatively.
Kissinger, who was never without his detractors, was besieged by critics who demanded accountability for his policies regarding Southeast Asia and support for repressive regimes in Latin America after he departed office.
During his eight turbulent years in those positions first as a national security adviser, then as secretary of state, and briefly while holding both positions. Hansel Kissinger addressed a vast array of significant foreign policy concerns.
He initiated “shuttle diplomacy” as the initial effort to achieve peace in the Middle East. He pursued relations between the United States and China through covert channels, thereby bringing an end to decades of mutual animosity and isolation.
His instigation of the Paris negotiations resulted in a “decent interval,” which he termed a face-saving mechanism, which enabled the United States to withdraw from the expensive Vietnam War. Two years later, the communists captured Saigon.
Furthermore, he implemented a strategy of detente with the Soviet Union, which resulted in arms control agreements, and introduced the notion that the protracted hostilities and nuclear menace of the Cold War were not irreversible.
He continued to tour for his book on leadership at the age of 99. When asked in an interview with ABC in July 2022 whether he desired the ability to reverse any of his decisions, Kissinger declined, stating, “I have spent my entire existence contemplating these issues. It serves as both my profession and my enjoyable pastime. Consequently, the suggestions I put forth were to the best of my ability at that time.
Despite this, he maintained ambivalent views regarding Nixon’s record, stating that “his foreign policy has stood the test of time and he was quite effective in domestic policy” while conceding that the impeachment-stricken leader had “advanced himself to several steps that were unsuitable for a president.”
On May 10, 2023, as Henry Kissinger reached the age of 100, his son David expressed in The Washington Post that his father’s centenary “could seem inexorably near to anyone who was acquainted with his commanding personality and penchant for historical symbolism.” In addition to having outlived the majority of his contemporaries, prominent critics, and pupils, he has maintained a tireless pace of activity well into his nineties.
In a CBS interview preceding his 100th birthday, when asked about those who consider his foreign policy conduct throughout the years to be a form of “criminality,” Kissinger was adamantly dismissive.
“That demonstrates their ignorance,” stated Henry Kissinger. “That was not how it was thought of.” It was not carried out in that manner.”
Kissinger remained actively engaged in international affairs until the final months of his life. When bilateral relations were at their lowest, he met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in July.
Fifty years after his shuttle diplomacy assisted in the conclusion of the 1973 Middle East war, during which Israel averted an unexpected assault from Egypt and Syria, Kissinger cautioned against the possibility of a recurrence of that conflict following Hamas’ unexpected assault on Israel on October 7.
Upon learning of his demise, prominent U.S. officials promptly poured in their tributes to Kissinger. Former President George W. Bush and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg both remarked that the United States “lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs” and that Henry Kissinger was “endlessly generous with the wisdom gained throughout an extraordinary life.”
Kissinger passed away at his Connecticut residence
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Kissinger espoused the realpolitik philosophy, which entailed employing diplomacy to accomplish pragmatic goals rather than promoting idealistic aspirations. Advocates argued that his pragmatic inclination benefited the United States, while detractors perceived him as employing a Machiavellian strategy contradicting democratic principles.
Nixon’s White House received censure for his authorization of telephone wiretappings of reporters and his own National Security Council staff to stifle news disclosures. On college campuses, he was condemned for the April 1970 bombardment and the Allied invasion of Cambodia, which were designed to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines to South Vietnamese communist forces.
Some believed that this “incursion,” as Nixon and Kissinger termed it, contributed to the Khmer Rouge insurgents seizing control of Cambodia and subsequently killing an estimated 2 million Cambodians.
In contrast, Henry Kissinger dedicated himself to dispelling a “prevalent myth” that he and Nixon had reached a settlement on peace terms available in 1969 and implemented in 1972; this notion, according to him, had unnecessarily prolonged the Vietnam War, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of American lives. Kissinger himself condemned this fallacy in 2007.
He maintained that to expedite the withdrawal process, it would have been necessary to concede to Hanoi’s insistence that the United States supplants the South Vietnamese government with a communist-dominated regime.
Unexpectedly, Kissinger, who was unkempt and untidy, gained notoriousness for being a gentleman during the formal Nixon administration. 1964 saw the divorce of Henry Kissinger from his first wife. He referred to women as “a diversion, a hobby.” Jill St. John accompanied him frequently. However, it transpired that his true romantic interest was Nancy Maginnes, whom he wed in 1974 and a researcher for Nelson Rockefeller.
The individual referred to as “Super-K” by Newsweek emerged victorious in a 1972 Playboy Club Bunnies poll regarding “the man I would most like to go on a date with.”
Power, according to Kissinger, is the quintessential aphrodisiac.
His approach to wartime diplomacy, however, earned him widespread disapproval among Americans. Decades later, he remained an electrical rod: In 2015, protesters disrupted 91-year-old Henry Kissinger’s appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, demanding his arrest for war crimes and denigrating his actions in Southeast Asia, Chile, and beyond.
Heinz Alfred Kissinger, the son of an educator, was born on May 27, 1923, in the Bavarian city of Fuerth. In 1938, Heinz and his family relocated from Nazi Germany to Manhattan, where he underwent a name change to Henry.
Born from his first marriage, Elizabeth and David were two offspring of Kissinger.
