Henry Kissinger, American diplomat and Nobel winner, dead at 100
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[November 30, 2023]
By Steve Holland and Arshad Mohammed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Henry Kissinger, a diplomatic powerhouse whose
roles as a national security adviser and secretary of state under two
presidents left an indelible mark on U.S. foreign policy and earned him
a controversial Nobel Peace Prize, died on Wednesday at age 100.
Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut, according to a statement from
his geopolitical consulting firm, Kissinger Associates Inc. No mention
was made of the circumstances.
It said he would be interred at a private family service, to be followed
at a later date by a public memorial service in New York City.
Kissinger had been active late in life, attending meetings in the White
House, publishing a book on leadership styles, and testifying before a
Senate committee about the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. In July
2023 he made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi
Jinping.
During the 1970s in the midst of the Cold War, he had a hand in many of
the epoch-changing global events of the decade while serving as national
security adviser and secretary of state under Republican President
Richard Nixon.
The German-born Jewish refugee's efforts led to the U.S. diplomatic
opening with China, landmark U.S.-Soviet arms control talks, expanded
ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the Paris Peace Accords
with North Vietnam.
Kissinger's reign as the prime architect of U.S. foreign policy waned
with Nixon's resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal. Still, he
continued to be a diplomatic force as secretary of state under Nixon's
successor, President Gerald Ford, and to offer strong opinions
throughout the rest of his life.
While many hailed Kissinger for his brilliance and broad experience,
others branded him a war criminal for his support for anti-communist
dictatorships, especially in Latin America. In his latter years, his
travels were circumscribed by efforts by other nations to arrest or
question him about past U.S. foreign policy.
His 1973 Peace Prize was awarded for ending American involvement in the
Vietnam War but it was one of the most controversial ever. Two members
of the Nobel committee resigned over the selection as questions arose
about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia. North Vietnamese diplomat Le
Duc Tho was selected to jointly receive the award but declined it.
Ford called Kissinger a "super secretary of state" but also noted his
prickliness and self-assurance, which critics were more likely to call
paranoia and egotism. Even Ford said, "Henry in his mind never made a
mistake."
"He had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew," Ford said
in an interview shortly before his death in 2006.
With his dour expression and gravelly, German-accented voice, Kissinger
possessed an image of both a stuffy academic and a ladies' man, squiring
starlets around Washington and New York in his bachelor days. Power, he
said, was the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Voluble on policy, Kissinger was reticent on personal matters, although
he once told a journalist he saw himself as a cowboy hero, riding off
alone.
HARVARD FACULTY
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Furth, Germany, on May 27, 1923, and
moved to the United States with his family in 1938 before the Nazi
campaign to exterminate European Jewry.
Anglicizing his name to Henry, Kissinger became a naturalized U.S.
citizen in 1943, served in the Army in Europe in World War Two, and
attended Harvard University on a scholarship, earning a master's degree
in 1952 and a doctorate in 1954. He was on Harvard's faculty for the
next 17 years.
During much of that time, Kissinger served as a consultant to government
agencies, including in 1967 when he acted as an intermediary for the
State Department in Vietnam. He used his connections with President
Lyndon Johnson's administration to pass on information about peace
negotiations to the Nixon camp.
When Nixon's pledge to end the Vietnam War helped him win the 1968
presidential election, he brought Kissinger to the White House as
national security adviser.
But the process of "Vietnamization" - shifting the burden of the war
from the 500,000-troop U.S. forces to the South Vietnamese - was long
and bloody, punctuated by massive U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, the
mining of the North's harbors, and the bombing of Cambodia.
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Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger arrives for a
memorial service for late Social Democratic senior politician Egon
Bahr at St. Mary's Church in Berlin, Germany, September 17, 2015.
REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/File Photo
Kissinger declared in 1972 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 adviser,
Kissinger was named secretary of state - giving him unchallenged
authority in foreign affairs.
An intensifying Arab-Israeli conflict launched Kissinger on his
first so-called "shuttle" mission, a brand of highly personal,
high-pressure diplomacy for which he became famous.
Thirty-two days spent shuttling between Jerusalem and Damascus
helped Kissinger forge a long-lasting disengagement agreement
between Israel and Syria in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
In an effort to diminish Soviet influence, Kissinger reached out to
its chief communist rival, China, and made two trips there,
including a secret one to meet with Premier Zhou Enlai. The result
was Nixon's historic summit in Beijing with Chairman Mao Zedong and
the eventual formalization of relations between the two countries.
Former U.S. ambassador to China Winston Lord, who served as
Kissinger's special assistant, saluted his former boss as a
"tireless advocate for peace," telling Reuters, "America has lost a
towering champion for the national interest."
STRATEGIC ARMS ACCORD
The Watergate scandal that forced Nixon to resign barely grazed
Kissinger, who was not connected to the cover-up and continued as
secretary of state when Ford took office in the summer of 1974. But
Ford did replace him as national security adviser in an effort to
hear more voices on foreign policy.
Later that year Kissinger went with Ford to Vladivostok in the
Soviet Union, where the president met Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev
and agreed to a basic framework for a strategic arms pact. The
agreement capped Kissinger's pioneering efforts at detente that led
to a relaxing of U.S.-Soviet tensions.
But Kissinger's diplomatic skills had their limits. In 1975, he was
faulted for failing to persuade Israel and Egypt to agree to a
second-stage disengagement in the Sinai.
And in the India-Pakistan War of 1971, Nixon and Kissinger were
heavily criticized for tilting toward Pakistan. Kissinger was heard
calling the Indians "bastards" - a remark he later said he
regretted.
Like Nixon, he feared the spread of left-wing ideas in the Western
hemisphere, and his actions in response were to cause deep suspicion
of Washington from many Latin Americans for years to come.
In 1970 he plotted with the CIA on how best to destabilize and
overthrow the Marxist but democratically elected Chilean President
Salvador Allende, while he said in a memo in the wake of Argentina's
bloody coup in 1976 that the military dictators should be
encouraged.
When Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, in 1976, Kissinger's
days in the suites of government power were largely over. The next
Republican in the White House, Ronald Reagan, distanced himself from
Kissinger, who he viewed as out of step with his conservative
constituency.
After leaving government, Kissinger set up a high-priced,
high-powered consulting firm in New York, which offered advice to
the world's corporate elite. He served on company boards and various
foreign policy and security forums, wrote books, and became a
regular media commentator on international affairs.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush picked
Kissinger to head an investigative committee. But outcry from
Democrats who saw a conflict of interest with many of his consulting
firm's clients forced Kissinger to step down from the post.
Divorced from his first wife, Ann Fleischer, in 1964, he married
Nancy Maginnes, an aide to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, in
1974. He had two children by his first wife.
(Reporting by Steve Holland in Washington and Arshad Mohammed in
Saint Paul, Minnesota; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Long
Beach, California; Editing by Bill Trott, Diane Craft and Rosalba
O'Brien)
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