Henry Kissinger (1923 - 2023) was a German-born American diplomat, political scientist and scholar who served as United States national security adviser from 1969 and as secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. [1] He directed the opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, pursued detente with the Soviet Union, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords on Vietnam, for which he shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. [2] His conduct of policy in Cambodia, Chile, Bangladesh and East Timor has been the subject of sustained criticism, including accusations of complicity in war crimes, which he rejected. [3]
Early life and education
Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on 27 May 1923 in Fuerth, Bavaria, into a Jewish family. [1] Under Nazi rule his father lost his teaching post and the family emigrated in 1938 to New York City; relatives who remained in Germany were murdered in the Holocaust.
He studied accounting at the City College of New York before being drafted into the army in 1943, gaining citizenship in the process. Assigned to military intelligence for his German, he served in Europe and in counterintelligence in occupied Germany, receiving a Bronze Star. He then entered Harvard, graduating summa cum laude in 1950 and completing a doctorate in 1954 on the Congress of Vienna, later published as A World Restored. [4]
Academic career and rise
Kissinger remained at Harvard as a faculty member, directing its international seminar. His 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, arguing for limited nuclear options rather than massive retaliation, brought him to the attention of policymakers, and he advised successive administrations and Governor Nelson Rockefeller. [2]
National security adviser and secretary of state
President Richard Nixon appointed Kissinger national security adviser in 1969, and the two concentrated foreign policy in the White House, bypassing the State Department. In July 1971 Kissinger travelled secretly to Beijing, preparing Nixon's visit the following year and beginning the normalisation of relations with the People's Republic of China after two decades of estrangement. [4]
He negotiated the SALT I agreement and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1972 as part of detente. In Vietnam he conducted years of talks with the North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, producing the Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 and the withdrawal of American forces. Both men were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year; Le Duc Tho declined it, and two members of the Nobel Committee resigned in protest. [3]
Kissinger became secretary of state in September 1973, holding both offices for a time and continuing under Gerald Ford. After the Yom Kippur War his shuttle diplomacy produced disengagement agreements between Israel, Egypt and Syria. [1]
Controversies
Kissinger's record has been heavily criticised by journalists, historians and human rights advocates. Central charges concern the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos from 1969; support for the Pakistani military during the 1971 killings in East Pakistan; efforts to destabilise Salvador Allende's elected government in Chile and support for the Pinochet regime; tolerance of the Argentine junta and Operation Condor; and the green light given to Indonesia before its 1975 invasion of East Timor. [3]
Declassified documents supplied much of this evidence. Kissinger defended his decisions as necessary Cold War judgements, and his defenders credit him with major diplomatic achievements under severe constraints.
Later life
After leaving office in 1977 Kissinger founded the consultancy Kissinger Associates and wrote extensively, producing the memoir White House Years, which won a National Book Award, and studies including Diplomacy and World Order. [4] He remained a prominent commentator into extreme old age, and died at his home in Kent, Connecticut, on 29 November 2023 at the age of 100.
