https://www.yahoo.com/news/henry-kissinger-american-diplomat-nobel-014546505.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Henry Kissinger, a diplomatic powerhouse whose
roles as a national security adviser and secretary of state under two
presidents left an indelible mark on U.S. foreign policy and earned him
a controversial Nobel Peace Prize, died on Wednesday at age 100.

Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut, according to a statement from
his geopolitical consulting firm, Kissinger Associates Inc. No mention
was made of the circumstances.

It said he would be interred at a private family service, to be followed
at a later date by a public memorial service in New York City.

Kissinger had been active past his centenary, attending meetings in the
White House, publishing a book on leadership styles, and testifying
before a Senate committee about the nuclear threat posed by North Korea.
In July 2023 he made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet Chinese
President Xi Jinping.

During the 1970s in the midst of the Cold War, he had a hand in many of
the epoch-changing global events of the decade while serving as national
security adviser and secretary of state under Republican President
Richard Nixon.

The German-born Jewish refugee's efforts led to the U.S. diplomatic
opening with China, landmark U.S.-Soviet arms control talks, expanded
ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and the Paris Peace Accords
with North Vietnam.

Kissinger's reign as the prime architect of U.S. foreign policy waned
with Nixon's resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal. Still, he
continued to be a diplomatic force as secretary of state under Nixon's
successor, President Gerald Ford, and to offer strong opinions
throughout the rest of his life.

While many hailed Kissinger for his brilliance and broad experience,
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 other nations to arrest or
question him about past U.S. foreign policy.

His 1973 Peace Prize - awarded jointly to North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho,
who would decline it - was one of the most controversial ever. Two
members of the Nobel committee resigned over the selection as questions
arose about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia.

Ford called Kissinger a "super secretary of state" but also noted his
prickliness and self-assurance, which critics were more likely to call
paranoia and egotism. Even Ford said, "Henry in his mind never made a
mistake."

"He had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew," Ford said
in an interview shortly before his death in 2006.

With his dour expression and gravelly, German-accented voice, Kissinger
possessed an image of both a stuffy academic and a ladies' man, squiring
starlets around Washington and New York in his bachelor days. Power, he
said, was the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Voluble on policy, Kissinger was reticent on personal matters, although
he once told a journalist he saw himself as a cowboy hero, riding off alone.

HARVARD FACULTY

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.

Anglicizing his name to Henry, Kissinger became a naturalized U.S.
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 "Vietnamization" - shifting the burden of the war
from the 500,000-troop U.S. forces to the South Vietnamese - was long
and bloody, punctuated by massive U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, the
mining of the North's harbors, 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
formalization of relations between the two countries.

Former U.S. 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
U.S.-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.

And in the India-Pakistan War of 1971, Nixon and Kissinger were heavily
criticized 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 destabilize 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.

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.

Sorry, [speedy!] Ferguson; sure didn't mean to step on your posting, but it wasn't evident when I posted. (And I checked less than five seconds before pressing "Poar message, but at point you still weren't rostered as yet.)

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

radioacti...@gmail.com <radioactiveseattle@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry, [speedy!] Ferguson; sure didn't mean to step on your posting, but it
> wasn't evident when I posted. (And I checked less than five seconds before
> pressing "Poar message, but at point you still weren't rostered as yet.)
>
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

The first Kissinger obit on a.o was actually Danny Burstein's
"he finally bought the farm" thread.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

Sorry, Louis; didn't see that.

STYBLE/Florida

Oh, and now I know WHY I missed Danny's posting; Kissinger's name was nowhere in the headline.

STYBLE/Florida

On Thursday, 30 November 2023 at 14:53:03 UTC+10:30, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote:
> Sorry, [speedy!] Ferguson; sure didn't mean to step on your posting, but it wasn't evident when I posted. (And I checked less than five seconds before pressing "Poar message, but at point you still weren't rostered as yet.)
>
> BRYAN STYBLE/Florida

Kissinger had a long and healthy life, an opportunity denied to many tens or hundreds of thousands of the victims of his policies. My thoughts are with those people.

Yeah, Meteorite, I realize a lot of people--and perhaps many that know a lot more than me about the ins-and-outs of his behind-the-scenes machinations--are as critical of his as I am of, say, Dennis Prager or Oprah.

Think I told you awhile back: I really gotta read Hitchens's book. (And now, SOON...before I'm too influenced by all the obit tributes, I mean.)

Appreciate your sentiment.

STYBLE/Florida

A classic strip from Doonesbury, on Jan. 1st, 1979:

https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1979/01/01

The story arc goes on for the rest of the week.