{"id":9702,"date":"2023-11-30T08:41:38","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T08:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zodiacsecret.com\/?p=9702"},"modified":"2025-12-15T11:54:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T11:54:32","slug":"contemporary-political-artist-henry-kissinger-a-dominating-and-polarizing-force-in-us-foreign-policy-dies-at-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/30\/contemporary-political-artist-henry-kissinger-a-dominating-and-polarizing-force-in-us-foreign-policy-dies-at-100\/","title":{"rendered":"Contemporary political artist, Henry Kissinger, a dominating and polarizing force in US foreign policy, dies at 100"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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CNN<\/strong> – Henry Kissinger, a former US secretary of state and national security adviser who escaped Nazi Germany in his youth to become one of the most influential and controversial foreign policy figures in American history, has died. He was 100.<\/h4>

Kissinger died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, according to a statement from his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates. The firm did not provide a cause of death.<\/h4>

Kissinger was synonymous with US foreign policy in the 1970s. He received a Nobel Peace Prize for helping arrange the end of US military involvement in the Vietnam War and is credited with secret diplomacy that helped President Richard Nixon open communist China to the United States and the West, highlighted by Nixon\u2019s visit to the country in 1972.<\/h4>

But he was also reviled by many over the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War that led to the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime and for his support of a coup against a democratic government in Chile.<\/h4>

In the Middle East, Kissinger performed what came to be known as \u201cshuttle diplomacy\u201d to separate Israeli and Arab forces after the fallout of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. His \u201cd\u00e9tente\u201d approach to US-Soviet relations, which helped relax tensions and led to several arms control agreements, largely guided US posture until the Reagan era.<\/h4>

But many members of Congress objected to the secretiveness of the Nixon-Kissinger approach to foreign policy, and human rights activists assailed what they saw as Kissinger\u2019s neglect of human rights in other countries. No issue complicated Kissinger\u2019s legacy more than the Vietnam War. When Nixon took office in 1969 \u2013 after promising a \u201csecret plan\u201d to end the war \u2013 roughly 30,000 Americans had been killed in Vietnam.<\/h4>

Despite efforts to shift more combat responsibilities to the South Vietnam government, American involvement persisted throughout Nixon\u2019s administration \u2013 critics accused Nixon and Kissinger of needlessly expanding the war \u2013 and US engagement ultimately ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975 and more than 58,000 American lives lost.<\/h4>

In a highly controversial decision, Kissinger shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with his North Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho for that year\u2019s Paris peace accords; citing the absence of actual peace in Vietnam, Tho declined to accept, and two members of the Nobel committee resigned in protest over the award.<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Domestic outrage in the US over the war centered on the bombings of Laos and Cambodia, where the brutal Khmer Rouge movement used the American bombings as a recruiting tool before coming into power and carrying out one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.<\/h4>

\u201cFor me, the tragedy of Vietnam was the divisions that occurred in the United States that made it, in the end, impossible to achieve an outcome that was compatible with the sacrifices that had been made,\u201d Kissinger told CNN\u2019s Wolf Blitzer in 2005.<\/h4>

Though his era as a high-powered architect of US foreign policy waned with the decline of Nixon amid the Watergate scandal, Kissinger continued to be an independent mover and shaker whose musings on diplomacy always found an ear.<\/h4>

\u201cIn order to negotiate, one has to understand the perception of the other side of the world. And they have to understand our perception. And there has to be a decision on both sides that they\u2019re going to try to reconcile these differences,\u201d he told CNN\u2019s Fareed Zakaria in 2008.<\/h4>

Kissinger also commanded attention well beyond the realm of international diplomacy. He topped Gallup\u2019s \u201cMost Admired Man\u201d survey three years in a row in the 1970s and his personal life, public appearances and nights in New York\u2019s famed Studio 54 club once drew regular headlines.<\/h4>

\u201cThe nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people, they think it\u2019s their fault,\u201d he once quipped.<\/h4>

Kissinger is survived by his wife, Nancy, two children from his first marriage, Elizabeth and David, and five grandchildren.<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Former President George W. Bush remembered Kissinger for \u201chis wisdom, his charm, and his humor.\u201d<\/h4>

\u201cI have long admired the man who fled the Nazis as a young boy from a Jewish family, then fought them in the United States Army. When he later became Secretary of State, his appointment as a former refugee said as much about his greatness as it did America\u2019s greatness,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cHe worked in the Administrations of two Presidents and counseled many more. I am grateful for that service and advice, but I am most grateful for his friendship.\u201d<\/h4>

Holocaust experience shaped worldview<\/strong><\/h3>

Born on May 27, 1923, in Furth, Germany, Kissinger, who was Jewish, fled Nazi persecution and came to the United States in 1938.<\/h4>

\u201cAbout half of the people I went to school with and about 13 members of my own family died in concentration camps,\u201d Kissinger once recalled.<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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He became a naturalized citizen in 1943 before serving in World War II and later earned his doctorate at Harvard University, where he would go on to teach. Yet the lure of public service brought him into government work.<\/h4>

Kissinger began consulting with the State Department and Pentagon on national security matters before serving as national security adviser and then secretary of state to Nixon.<\/h4>

At Kissinger\u2019s swearing-in ceremony as secretary of state in 1973, Nixon called it \u201cvery significant in these days when we must think of America as part of the whole world community that for the first time in history a naturalized citizen is the secretary of state of the United States.\u201d<\/h4>

The pair remained close as the Nixon administration navigated a near-constant stream of controversy at home and abroad.<\/h4>

By the end of Nixon\u2019s presidency, Kissinger was the last original inner-circle adviser to the beleaguered president still standing after Watergate. Nixon\u2019s resignation note was addressed to Kissinger, and the two prayed together on Nixon\u2019s final night in the White House.<\/h4>

\u201cThe last night in office, he invited me to come to the Lincoln sitting room where he and I used to plan foreign policy together,\u201d Kissinger recalled in a 2012 interview with CBS News.<\/h4>

\u201cAnd here was a man who had spent his whole life making himself president, and he had thrown it all away by his own actions. And as I was leaving, he said, \u2018Why don\u2019t we pray together?\u2019 And so it was a moving, and in a way appropriate moment, to a profound tragedy in a person\u2019s life.\u201d<\/h4>

After Nixon\u2019s resignation, Kissinger continued as secretary of state under President Gerald Ford, but his later years in government were marked by frustration. Conservatives within the Republican Party objected to his \u201cd\u00e9tente\u201d approach with the Soviet Union, and South Vietnam was overrun by the communist North Vietnam in 1975, despite the earlier peace accords.<\/h4>

\u201cYou want to leave your country better off than you found it. And there\u2019s nothing in private life you can do that\u2019s as interesting and as fulfilling,\u201d Kissinger once said of his approach to government work.<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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A legacy that still reverberates in US politics<\/strong><\/h3>

After leaving the State Department in 1977, Kissinger became a prolific globe-trotting author and international consultant.<\/h4>

He briefly returned to the federal government in 2002 when President George W. Bush named Kissinger to lead a commission investigating the events leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks. But Kissinger resigned just a month later amid questions about potential conflicts of interest.<\/h4>

His writings and advice on geopolitics have remained required reading in the foreign policy community in the United States and overseas \u2013 even as his detractors have remained just as critical.<\/h4>

In 2016, for example, Kissinger\u2019s name proved to be a lightning rod during a tense Democratic presidential debate exchange between the party\u2019s two leading candidates at the time, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.<\/h4>

\u201cI am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. Count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger,\u201d Sanders said, a knock on Clinton, who had spoken of seeking Kissinger\u2019s counsel when she was secretary of state.<\/h4>

The comments underscore Kissinger\u2019s enduring divisiveness, even decades after leaving public office. But for a statesman who forged an unlikely path to diplomacy on his own terms, criticism always came with the territory.<\/h4>

\u201cI\u2019ve had an opportunity to do the things that I believe in. I have been able to express myself in many forums,\u201d he told Zakaria in 2008. \u201cAnd it would be unnatural, and probably would mean I haven\u2019t done very much, if there were not other points of view that were expressed with some vehemence.\u201d<\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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By Paul LeBlanc and Kristin Wilson, CNN<\/strong><\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN – Henry Kissinger, a former US secretary of state and national security adviser who escaped Nazi Germany in his youth to become one of the most influential and controversial foreign policy figures in American history, has died. He was 100. Kissinger died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, according to a statement from his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,22],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-9702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-zodiac","tag-henry-kissinger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9702"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10263,"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9702\/revisions\/10263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astrotr.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}