WASHINGTON: Henry Kissinger, the dominant US diplomat of the Cold War era who helped Washington open up to China, forge arms control deals with the Soviet Union and end the Vietnam War but who was reviled by critics over human rights, has died at the age of 100.
Kissinger, a German-born Jewish refugee whose career took him from academia to diplomacy and who remained an active voice in foreign policy into his later years, died at his home in Connecticut on Wednesday, his geopolitical consulting firm, Kissinger Associates Inc, said.
Kissinger was at the height of his powers during the 1970s in the midst of the Cold War when he served as national security adviser and secretary of state under Republican President Richard Nixon.
After Nixon's resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal, he remained a diplomatic force as secretary of state under Nixon's successor, President Gerald Ford.
He was the architect of 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.
While many hailed Kissinger for his brilliance and statesmanship, 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 some nations to arrest or question him about past US foreign policy.
He won the 1973 Peace Prize for ending US 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 US bombing of Cambodia. North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho, selected to share the award, declined it.
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in Fuerth, 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 naturalised US citizen in 1943, served in the Army in Europe in World War Two, and attended Harvard University on a scholarship, where he earned a doctorate in 1954 and stayed on 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 Democratic 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 in Kissinger as national security adviser.
But the process of "Vietnamisation" — shifting the burden of the war from 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 signed 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 "shuttle" mission, a brand of highly personal, high-pressure diplomacy for which he became famous.
Thirty-two days of shuttling between Jerusalem and Damascus helped Kissinger forge a long-lasting disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Like Nixon, he feared the spread of left-wing ideas in the Western hemisphere, and his actions in response led to deep distrust of Washington by many Latin Americans for years to come.
In 1970, he plotted with the CIA on how best to topple the Marxist, democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, and in a memo after Argentina's bloody coup in 1976 he said that the military dictators should be encouraged.
When Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, in 1976, Kissinger's days in government power were largely over. The next Republican in the White House, Ronald Reagan, distanced himself from Kissinger, viewing him 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.
He remained active late in life, attending meetings in the White House, publishing a book on leadership, and testifying before a Senate committee about North Korea's nuclear threat. In July 2023, he made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. — Reuters
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