World leaders on Thursday eulogized Henry Kissinger, a diplomat, politician and intellectual whose worldview helped guide U.S. foreign policy in the second half of the 20th century and beyond.
Henry Kissinger was born Heinz-Alfred Kissinger in Germany in 1923. His family fled the country a few weeks before Kristallnacht and managed to obtain entry permits to the United States, despite the harsh restriction on the entry of Jewish refugees into the country at the time. Under the Nazis, young Kissinger was not allowed to enroll in high school and his father was fired from his job, when he arrived in the United States, Kissinger changed his name to "Henry" and turned to complete his studies.
The young Kissinger worked in a shaving brush factory during the day and studied at night, excelled academically, and although he remained with a pronounced German accent, he integrated well into American culture. In 1043, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and, as a German-speaking intelligence soldier, Ho participated in combat operations in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium. He entered his native Germany with the American army and helped liberate a concentration camp and arrest Gestapo officers. Kissinger later claimed that his military service "made me a real American."
Kissinger was an honors student and in 1954 received his doctorate from the prestigious Harvard University. Already in his doctorate, Kissinger shaped his realistic worldview as a statesman. In Hadasbar, who wrote about the term "legitimacy," he declared: "Legitimacy does not mean justice. It's just an international consensus on acceptable practices and goals in foreign relations."
He entered the field of diplomacy during one of the most turbulent periods in human history, when the Soviet Union and the United States, both armed with nuclear weapons, fought an indirect battle for control of the globe. In 1957, he became associate director of Harvard's Department of Government and the Center for International Relations, placing him at the forefront of international relations at the time, advising the Secretariat of State on a variety of issues.
In 1968, he was appointed by Nixon as National Security Adviser, his first position in a U.S. government. In Nixon's second term, Kissinger was appointed Secretary of State and began turning his theories of international relations into reality. He was known for his so-called "visitation diplomacy," traveling to countries and meeting with their heads to safeguard American interests.
His "realpolitik" approach to the Soviet Union helped in a great way to keep the Cold War going. He succeeded in reaching agreements on limiting nuclear weapons and slowing the international arms race, and succeeded in creating an open channel of dialogue with Moscow and Beijing during the 1970s. In Israel, he will be remembered for helping to reverse the American approach to arming Israel during the Yom Kippur War, during which he visited Israel and met with then-Prime Minister Golda Meir. He was an important part of the talks that led to the ceasefire and its transformation into peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt. That same year, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
But despite his historic success in the diplomatic sphere, Kissinger has also been widely criticized, especially for turning a blind eye to the actions of repressive regimes around the world. Kissinger supported a coup against Chile's democratic government and is known to have encouraged Argentina's military junta to violently break with its left-wing opponents. Kissinger has often criticized Israel and once claimed that "Israel has no foreign policy, only a domestic policy." He was also accused of deliberately slowing aid to Israel and taking harsh measures against it in order to present the Arab world with a "balanced attitude" to the state of the Middle East in order to lift the Saudi oil embargo on his country. Even at the age of a century, Kissinger, who is confined to a wheelchair, managed to draw fire and criticism after writing an article expressing understanding for Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, over the crisis of the war in Ukraine.
Last year, Kissinger claimed in an interview with media outlets in his native country that if he called Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin, they would probably get the call. Very few, if any, diplomats past or present can boast of such abilities, and it testifies more than anything else to Kinsinger's Kitty role in shaping the world order in the second half of the tithes, and of shaping it to invent geopolitical as we know it today.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us