Henry Kissinger died this Wednesday at the age of 100. He is a controversial Nobel Peace Prize winner and a diplomat who served two US presidents and left an indelible mark on foreign policy.

Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut, Kissinger Associates said.

Kissinger has been active since his centenary, attending White House meetings, publishing a book on leadership styles and testifying before a Senate committee on the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. In July 2023, he made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In the 1970s, he participated in many of the decade’s era-changing world events while serving as Secretary of State under a Republican president. Richard Nixon. The efforts of a German-born Jewish refugee led to the diplomatic opening of China, historic arms control negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union, expanded ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the Paris Peace Agreement with North Vietnam.

Kissinger’s reign as the chief architect of American foreign policy faltered after Nixon’s resignation in 1974. However, he continued to be a diplomatic force under President Gerald Ford and voice strong opinions for the rest of his life.

While many praised Kissinger for his talent and breadth of experience, others called him a war criminal for his support of anti-communist dictatorships, especially in Latin America. In recent years, his travels have been limited by attempts by other countries to arrest him or question him about past American foreign policy.

His 1973 Peace Prize, awarded jointly to Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam, who refused it, was one of the most controversial in history. Two members of the Nobel committee resigned over the election, and questions were raised about the covert American bombing of Cambodia.

Ford called Kissinger a “super secretary of state” but also noted his irritable and self-confident personality, which critics would rather call paranoia and selfishness. Even Ford said, “In his opinion, Henry was never wrong.”

“He had the thinnest skin of any public figure I’ve ever met,” Ford said in an interview shortly before his death in 2006.

With his stern expression and raspy, German-accented voice, Kissinger was no rock star, but he had the image of a ladies’ man, escorting stars around Washington and New York in their bachelor days. Power, he said, is the greatest aphrodisiac.

While he volunteered for politics, Kissinger was reserved on personal matters, although he once told a reporter that he considered himself a cowboy hero who went it alone.

HARVARD FACULTY

Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Fürth, Germany, on May 27, 1923, and moved to the United States with his family in 1938, before the Nazi campaign to exterminate European Jews began.

Changing his name to Henry, Kissinger became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1943, served in the Army in Europe during World War II, and received a fellowship to Harvard University, where he received a master’s degree in 1952 and a doctorate in 1954. at Harvard University. teacher for the next 17 years.

During much of this time, Kissinger worked as a consultant to government agencies, including in 1967 when he acted as the State Department’s liaison in Vietnam. He used his connections with President Lyndon Johnson’s administration to convey information about the peace negotiations to the Nixon camp.

When Nixon’s promise to end the Vietnam War won him the 1968 presidential election, he invited Kissinger to the White House as national security adviser.

But the process of “Vietnamization”—shifting the burden of the war from half a million American troops to the South Vietnamese—was long and bloody, interrupted by massive American bombing of North Vietnam, mining of northern ports, and bombing of Cambodia.

In 1972, Kissinger declared that “peace is at hand” in Vietnam, but the Paris Peace Accords reached in January 1973 were little more than a prelude to the final Communist takeover of the South two years later.

In 1973, in addition to his role as National Security Advisor, Kissinger was appointed Secretary of State, giving him unchallenged authority over foreign policy.

The escalating Arab-Israeli conflict forced Kissinger to undertake his first so-called “shuttle mission” – the highly personal and intense form of diplomacy for which he became famous.

The thirty-two days he spent traveling between Jerusalem and Damascus helped Kissinger negotiate a lasting disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

In an effort to reduce Soviet influence, Kissinger turned to his main communist rival, China, and made two trips there, including a secret one to meet with Prime Minister Zhou Enlai. The result was Nixon’s historic summit in Beijing with Chairman Mao Zedong and the subsequent formalization of relations between the two countries.

AGREEMENT ON STRATEGIC WEAPONS

The Watergate scandal that forced Nixon to resign hardly affected Kissinger, who was not involved in the cover-up and continued to serve as Secretary of State when Ford took office in the summer of 1974. But Ford replaced him as national security adviser in an effort to hear more voices on foreign policy.

Later that year, Kissinger traveled with Ford to Vladivostok in the Soviet Union, where the president met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and agreed on the basic framework of a strategic arms pact. The agreement capped Kissinger’s pioneering efforts to achieve détente, which eased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.

But Kissinger’s diplomatic skills had their limits. In 1975, he was accused of failing to persuade Israel and Egypt to agree to a second phase of withdrawal from the Sinai.

And during the India-Pakistan War of 1971, Nixon and Kissinger came under fire for leaning towards Pakistan. Kissinger was heard calling the Indians “bastards”, something he later said he regretted.

Like Nixon, he feared the spread of leftist ideas in the Western Hemisphere, and his responses would create deep suspicion of Washington among many Latin Americans for years to come.

In 1970, he conspired with the CIA on how best to destabilize and overthrow Chile’s Marxist but democratically elected President Salvador Allende, declaring in a memorandum after Argentina’s bloody 1976 coup that military dictators should be encouraged.

When Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, in 1976, Kissinger’s days in government were all but over. The next Republican in the White House, Ronald Reagan, distanced himself from Kissinger, whom he viewed as out of step with his conservative base.

After leaving government, Kissinger created an expensive and powerful consulting firm in New York, offering advice to the world’s business elite. He has served on corporate boards and on several security and foreign policy forums, written books, and become a regular media commentator on international affairs.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Kissinger to head the investigative committee. But protests from Democrats who saw conflicts of interest with many of his consulting firm’s clients forced Kissinger to resign.

After divorcing his first wife, Anne Fleischer, in 1964, he married Nancy Maginnes, an aide to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, in 1974. He had two children from his first wife.

Reuters.