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.
Anglicising his name to Henry, Kissinger became a naturalised US 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 “Vietnamisation” — shifting the burden of the war from the 500,000-troop US forces to the South Vietnamese — was long and bloody, punctuated by massive US bombing of North Vietnam, the mining of the North’s harbours, 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 formalisation of relations between the two countries.
Former US 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 US-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.
Henry Kissinger points to a map of the Sinai during a meeting with US President Gerald Ford and congressional members in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington DC, US, January 20, 1977. — Gerald R Ford Library/Handout via Reuters
Henry Kissinger points to a map of the Sinai during a meeting with US President Gerald Ford and congressional members in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington DC, US, January 20, 1977. — Gerald R Ford Library/Handout via Reuters
And in the India-Pakistan War of 1971, Nixon and Kissinger were heavily criticised 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 destabilise 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.
Code Pink demonstrators surround former US secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz before the beginning of the Senate Armed Services Committee on global challenges and US national security strategy on Capitol Hill in Washington January 29, 2015. — Reuters
Code Pink demonstrators surround former US secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz before the beginning of the Senate Armed Services Committee on global challenges and US national security strategy on Capitol Hill in Washington January 29, 2015. — Reuters
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.
