Henry Kissinger, American diplomat and Nobel winner, dead at 100

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Nov 29 (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 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
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 - 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 U.S. bombing of Cambodia.

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.

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 Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/henry-kissinger-american-diplomat-nobel-
winner-dead-100-2023-11-30/