US diplomatic force, controversial Nobel winner Kissinger dies at 100

Reuters / 05:40 AM December 01, 2023

Henry Kissinger, American diplomat and Nobel winner, dies

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. REUTERS/China Daily/File Photo

Henry Kissinger, a diplomatic powerhouse whose roles as a national security adviser and secretary of state under two presidents left an indelible mark on US 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 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 past his centenary, 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, 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 US diplomatic opening with China, landmark US-Soviet arms control talks, expanded ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam.

Architect of policy

Kissinger’s reign as the prime architect of US 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.

Many hailed Kissinger for his brilliance and broad experience but others branded him a war criminal for his support for anticommunist dictatorships, especially in Latin America.

His 1973 Peace Prize—awarded jointly to North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho, who would decline it—was one of the most controversial ever. Two members of the Nobel committee resigned over the selection as questions arose about the secret US bombing of Cambodia.

‘Thinnest skin’

Ford called Kissinger a “super secretary of state” but also noted his prickliness and self-assurance. Ford said, “Henry in his mind never made a mistake.”

“He had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew,” Ford noted 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.

But Kissinger was reticent on personal matters. He once told a journalist he saw himself as a cowboy hero, riding off alone.

Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Furth, Germany, on May 27, 1923, and moved to the United States with his family in 1938.

Anglicizing his name to Henry, Kissinger became a naturalized US citizen in 1943, served in the army in Europe in World War II, 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 Department of State 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.

Unchallenged authority

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.

Wooing China

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.

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.

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 led to a relaxing of US-Soviet tensions.

Shortcomings

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.

In 1970, he plotted with the Central Intelligence Agency on how best to destabilize and overthrow the Marxist but democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, but 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.

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.

Divorced from his first wife, Ann Fleischer, in 1964, he married Nancy Maginnes, an aide to New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, in 1974. He had two children by his first wife.