Henry Kissinger, one of the most emblematic figures of American diplomacy during the 1970s, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 100 at his home in Connecticut, according to his consulting agency, which did not provide a cause of death. As a strategist of US foreign policy during the turbulent 1960s and 70s, Kissinger held immense power. His name has been associated with nearly every major event of that time, from the Vietnam War to the US-Soviet Union confrontation. The paradoxes of his life were extraordinary. Despite being a controversial figure of the Cold War, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. Often identified with anti-communist right-wing politics, he was the architect of the US-China rapprochement, bringing China out of isolation under Mao Zedong’s regime. Despite being born in Germany and speaking English with a strong foreign accent, he became one of the most recognizable symbols of Washington and its global power.
Henry Kissinger, who met with the Chancellor of the military regime that had taken power in Argentina three months prior, in June 1976, was asked if he minded speaking in Spanish because the Chancellor had difficulty with English. «Not at all,» responded Kissinger, then the Secretary of State of the United States and a global chess player, before breaking the ice with his Argentine interlocutor by announcing that he would attend the 1978 World Cup in their country, «no matter what happens.» «Argentina is going to win,» he predicted. The Chancellor, Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti, warned moments later that his country had problems with «terrorism» and the economy, and asked for US support for the military government. «We have been closely following the events in Argentina. We wish the new government the best and we will do everything possible to help it succeed,» responded Kissinger, according to a declassified US document about the conversation, which took place in Chile under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Shortly after, Kissinger gave Guzzetti another warning: «If there are things that need to be done, they should be done quickly. But you must quickly return to normal procedures,» he said in a statement that critics interpreted as a green light for the new Argentine regime to violate human rights. With these types of messages and policies, both in Latin America and the rest of the world, the US promoted its interests during the Cold War through Kissinger, one of the most influential and controversial diplomats of the 20th century, who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 100.
Henry Alfred Kissinger was born in Fürth, in Bavaria, Germany, on May 27, 1923, into a Jewish family that fled Nazi persecution and moved to New York when he was 15 years old. In 1943, the same year he became a US citizen, he was recruited by the US Army and became a German interpreter for counterintelligence during World War II. After the war, he returned to the US and entered the prestigious Harvard University on a scholarship, where he graduated with honors in Political Science in 1950. He obtained a master’s and a doctorate, and in 1954, he joined as a professor. His good academic reputation allowed him to enter the halls of politics when President Richard Nixon appointed him as his National Security Advisor in 1969 and Secretary of State in 1973. The veteran Republican politician and Harvard intellectual formed a pair that left a mark on US foreign policy with a series of unexpected and daring initiatives. In 1973, Kissinger shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho.
Kissinger advocated for decision-making based on pragmatism and national convenience rather than ideological preferences. Among other things: He actively contributed to the normalization of US-China relations and was the architect of détente, or the policy of relaxation, with the Soviet Union. In 1973, his mediation between Israel and Egypt helped end the Yom Kippur War. He was also instrumental in the Paris Peace Accords to withdraw the US from the Vietnam War, which his government had prolonged, earning him the Nobel Prize alongside the North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho. However, his critics point out that he was responsible for atrocities such as the secret US bombings in Cambodia, accusing the nation of providing refuge to communist guerrillas from neighboring Vietnam. But Kissinger is a controversial figure not only for his role in US foreign policy but also for his personality. «He had that kind of cold-blooded and calculating approach to war and peace,» said David Greenberg, author of the book «Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image.» He possessed «all this intelligence, but without the moral or ethical foundation,» he added.
Latin America, where the Cold War often turned into a hot conflict, was one of the regions that experienced Kissinger’s influence firsthand. This has been evident through various declassified official documents published by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. These papers show, for example, that Kissinger told Nixon in 1970 that the democratic election of Chilean socialist President Salvador Allende was «one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere.» Kissinger feared that the South American country would become an example of a «elected and successful Marxist government,» and he told the CIA director, Richard Helms, that Washington would prevent «Chile from going down the drain.» Days after Allende was overthrown by Pinochet in 1973, Kissinger spoke on the phone with Nixon about the military coup: «We didn’t do it. I mean, we helped,» he told the president. «We want to help, not undermine. You did a great service to the West by overthrowing Allende,» Kissinger personally told Pinochet in June 1976 when he was already Secretary of State under Gerald Ford’s administration following Nixon’s resignation due to the Watergate scandal. That meeting took place in Chile when concerns were growing worldwide about serious human rights violations by the Chilean regime. It was on that same trip that Kissinger met with Argentine Foreign Minister Guzzetti and expressed his support for the de facto government that launched a «dirty war» in which up to 30,000 people would be killed or disappeared. Other declassified US documents show that Kissinger, furious at the decision of then Cuban President Fidel Castro to send troops to Angola, outlined plans in 1976 to «crush Cuba» with airstrikes, which were never implemented.
After leaving the government in 1977, when Democrat Jimmy Carter assumed the US presidency, Kissinger founded the international consulting firm Kissinger Associates, which made millions by selling advice to large corporations. He also devoted himself to one of his passions, soccer, and as he had announced to Guzzetti, he personally traveled to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, despite concerns expressed by the US ambassador in that country that his support for the military junta would harden its stance on human rights, just as the Carter administration was pressuring it to stop the repression. Kissinger never completely escaped the controversies he sparked. In May 2001, during a visit to Paris, a French judge summoned him to testify as a witness in an investigation into the coup and human rights violations in Chile, but the former Secretary of State refused to answer and left France. There were also attempts to involve him in proceedings in other countries…
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