Who was Henry Kissinger, the great statesman who charted the path of the United States

Brilliant, incisive and relentlessly ambitious, Henry Kissinger reigned over the foreign policy of U.S after Second World War. The man who marked the modern direction of the world’s relations with China He died on Wednesday, aged 100.

As Secretary of State to presidents Richard Nixon It is Gerald FordKissinger was a master strategist whose intellectual gifts were recognized even by his leading critics, who nevertheless blamed him for undermining human rights and democracy in the world. Vietnam War and other scenarios.

Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon in 1972.

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Recognized for his sharp, witty speech, always with a touch of his native German accent, and his thick glasses, Kissinger was considered the epitome of international power, an image he capitalized on as a consultant decades after leaving government.

Kissinger died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, indicated a statement from his consultancy. He was 100 years old.

Kissinger’s name is commonly associated with the “royal politics”, diplomacy based on power and practicality.

Praising his cool perspective that always sought to impose American interests, his admirers compared him to the great statesmen of history.

But for many, especially on the left, Kissinger was considered a war criminal who was never tried for his role, among others, in expanding the Vietnam War and supporting the military coup in Pepper in 1973.

Series of lucky events

Named as Heinz Alfred Kissingerwas born into a Jewish family in Fuerth, Germany, on May 27, 1923. He fled the Nazi regime in 1938 with his father, a teacher, his mother and a younger brother. They settled New York.

Henry Kissinger (Photo: Paul Crowder)

“I thought I would be an accountant” he told USA Today in 1985. “I never thought I would teach at Harvard. It wasn’t my dream to become Secretary of State”.

“A more fortunate series of events could not have occurred to me.”.

He worked at a shaving brush factory while attending high school at night.

He then studied accounting at the City College of New York, but was drafted into the Army in 1943 before graduating.

His knowledge of German led him to an intelligence unit tasked with identifying the Nazis as they advanced. Europe.

In the Army, Kissinger met his first mentor, also a German refugee. Fritz Kraemera political scientist who convinced him to transfer to Harvard, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1950 and a doctorate in 1954.

The young professor’s first book, “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy”(1957), about how the new and ultra-destructive nuclear weapons They should adapt to the needs of diplomacy, he quickly made his point.

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Redefining relations with the US

But Kissinger’s ambitions went beyond academia, and he took consulting jobs at National Security Council it’s him Department of State during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy It is Lyndon Johnson.

USA: Henry Kissinger planned to attack Cuba in 1976

These jobs included trips to Vietnamwhere U.S He was involved in containing the communists.

Seeking to serve in government, Kissinger supported the governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican who unsuccessfully sought the presidency three times. But in 1968 he came to support Nixon, who later made him his national security adviser.

Nixon first appointed a low-key Secretary of State, William Rogers. But at the end of 1973, already involved in the Watergate which ended his presidency, Rogers resigned and Kissinger took over the position, which he held until January 1977 at Ford.

In an unprecedented arrangement that demonstrated his immense influence, he served as national security advisor and secretary of state for two years.

Nixon was already making his mark with his strident anti-communist policies, but he welcomed Kissinger’s method (called “to stop“) to find areas where the United States could ease tensions with the Soviet Union.

Kissinger held talks with Moscow which constituted the most serious effort to control the nuclear race during the Cold War and, in 1972, the powers reached the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treatywhich imposed limits on their arsenals.

As part of a strategy to isolate the Soviet Union while stirring diplomacy around Vietnam, Kissinger made a historic decision: to reach out to communist China.

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was at the center of the negotiations, both to agree to send aid to Israel and to achieve a ceasefire in the conflict.

Self-isolated amidst the destruction left by the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedongmainland China was left without contact with the United States, which recognized the defeated nationalists who fled to Taiwan.

Kissinger secretly traveled to Beijing in 1971 and met with the prime minister Zhou Enlaipaving the way for Nixon’s trip a year later, in which the president exchanged ideas with Zhou, visited the weakened Mao, and set the stage for establishing diplomatic ties.

Calculating

“That China and the United States would find a way to come together was inevitable given the needs of the moment.” Kissinger wrote four decades later in one of his 18 books.

“The fact that it happened so tightly and was executed with so few deviations is a tribute to the leadership that made it possible.”, he wrote with the lack of modesty that characterized him.

This opening ended up leading Western companies to reach China, which in this century became the United States’ greatest competitor.

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Domestically, ending the Vietnam War was the priority. Nixon promised in the campaign to achieve “peace with honor” And after taking office, the president and Kissinger launched a policy that forced their ally South Vietnam to take a leadership role so that American troops could withdraw.

To build strength before peace negotiations, Nixon and Kissinger authorized bombings in Laos It is Cambodia between 1969 and 1970 to affect the rebel movement.

The bombings, not authorized by Congress and kept secret from the public, did not prevent rebel infiltration, killed thousands of civilians and helped the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge.

Kissinger traveled to Paris several times, at first discreetly, to speak with the Paris negotiator. North Vietnam, Le Duc Tho.

Henry Kissinger (r) and Le Duc Tho (arm raised) were jointly awarded in 1973, but the Vietnamese politician declined the award.

A 1983 agreement ended US military operations and the two men received the Nobel Prize of Peacealthough only Kissinger accepted.

Taped conversations with Nixon later revealed that the calculating Kissinger expected the fall of South Vietnam after the agreement.

In another example ofroyal politics”, Kissinger recommended that the United States delay sending weapons to its ally Israel after he was attacked in 1973 in Yom Kippur Warwhereas the Arabs would be in a better position to make peace if they achieved some victories first.

Scrutiny

Kissinger’s record has come under intense scrutiny.

In a 2001 book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger“, the writer Christopher Hitchens He said he should be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Declassified documents showed the direct role of the United States in undermining the government of Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allendeincluding support for officials who killed a general who refused to participate in the 1970 coup attempt and support for the general’s seizure of power Augusto Pinochet in 1973.

Kissinger was also criticized for allowing the Indonesian regime, then a close anti-communist ally, to use US-supplied military equipment to invade. East Timor in 1975.

More than 100,000 East Timorese died during the occupation, which ended in 1999, according to a 2005 estimate by the country’s Truth Commission.

For a time, his intellectual capacity led him to be seen as a kind of “sex symbols”And rumors abounded about his relationships with stars of hollywood.

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In 1974, a decade after the end of his first marriage, Kissinger married Nancy Magnesthe imposing former assistant of Rockefeller and who survived him, as well as two children from his first marriage, David and Elizabeth.

Kissinger remained at the disposal of the Republicans when they returned to power with Ronald Reagan and he rarely missed opportunities to give his advice, always willing to leave his cover in Manhattan for washington when the leaders called him.

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”, he said himself in the 1970s.

Source: Elcomercio