Who was Henry Kissinger really?

His first name was Heinz, and inside was the story of a young German Jew who escaped Nazi Germany, something he didn’t talk much about even when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. After all, Henry Kissinger was certainly not a politician aiming for sentimentality or easy pacifist rhetoric. His North Star realpolitikand with that he managed to climb the ladder of power in the United States until he became the first foreign-born Secretary of State and for a time became the most powerful man in the world, although he never managed to get elected. Head of the White House. He passed away today, a few months after turning 100, “leaving behind most of his peers, leading detractors, and students,” as his son wrote on his father’s last birthday. Yes, because although Kissinger is a diplomatic legend to everyone, not everyone gave him this label as a medal of merit. To many, Kissinger would be the gray celebrity behind some of the darkest chapters of US foreign policy, such as the bloody coup in Chile.

German roots

Born in Fürth, Bavaria, to a family of teachers on May 27, 1923, Kissinger fled Germany and risked ending up in a concentration camp three months before Kristallnacht. He landed in New York in 1938 and five years later became an American citizen and joined the army. Military leaders immediately realized that they were faced with a very valuable resource: Thanks to his knowledge of German, Kissinger was quickly transferred to intelligence and sent to Europe. Here he participates in the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of his former homeland from the Nazis. He will remain in Germany for a while after being promoted to be responsible for the de-Nazification of various cities in Hesse.

Studies

Returning to civilian life, Kissinger put his intelligence to the service of his university studies, graduating from Harvard with a degree in political science and then becoming a professor. His foray into politics came when he took office as an advisor to the National Security Council under President Dwight Eisenhower. His heart beats for the Republicans, but over the years he does not disdain his collaboration with Democratic presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (so much so that his name was changed to “Counselor to the Prince”). His friendship with New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, however, enabled him to throw himself into the real political arena among the ranks of the Republicans. He campaigned for Rockefeller in the Republican primary, but was defeated by New York businessman Richard Nixon.

combination with Nixon

Not bad for Kissinger, who took on the role of national security advisor at the age of 45. The Prince’s advisor forms a pair with Nixon that remains in history, for better or worse. Between 1969 and 1973, he remained faithful to the teachings of Austrian Klemens von Metternich, one of the fathers of Austria. realpolitikAlthough Kissinger is not the official Secretary of State (that is, the US Secretary of State), he is redesigning American foreign policy and world balances. His virtue was that he talked to everyone; His flaw (at least to his critics) was that he had no sense of morality. For him it was only the end result that mattered, even the challenge to the fixed points of republican politics.

Relations with Russia

And so, facing the Cold War with Russia, Kissinger pushed for recognition of communist China at the UN: a strategic alliance with a secondary, albeit communist, enemy to isolate the primary enemy. Meanwhile, he launched so-called “shuttle diplomacy” in the Middle East: constant back-and-forth between opposing sides to try to bring their points of view closer together. The diplomatic masterpiece came in 1973, when he pulled the United States out of the Vietnam quagmire by signing the Paris Agreement, which ended the conflict. These agreements earned him the Nobel Peace Prize and the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Watergate scandal ended the relationship with Nixon but not his central role in the White House. As a full-fledged foreign policy manager, Kissinger realpolitik, At the Helsinki Conference in 1975, he came to the point of being accused of wanting to rehabilitate the implacable enemy Russia: Republicans, like future president Ronald Reagan, harshly criticized him for what was seen as a concession to Moscow. However, many historians saw the Final Act of the Conference as a fundamental step towards easing relations between the West and Russia and ending the Cold War.

star advisor

Helsinki was the last major diplomatic effort of Kissinger’s career. When Democrat Jimmy Carter came to power in 1977, he left politics and founded a consulting firm in New York. From that moment on, a new life begins, consisting of conferences around the world and successful books reaching the bookstores of geopolitics experts and enthusiasts. According to his critics, Kissinger is turning into a powerful lobbyist who can pull the strings behind the scenes. When George W. Bush gave him the chairmanship of the commission on the September 11 attacks, he resigned from his position so that the client list of his consulting firm would not be disclosed.

Skeletons in the closet

In those years, critical reconstructions of his work in the White House began to appear in the press. British journalist Christopher Hitchen accuses him of participating in various destabilization operations from Cambodia to Laos, from Bangladesh to Iraq. The accusations include being one of the main architects of the coup in Chile and establishing General Pinochet’s bloody dictatorship. There are also those who want the International Criminal Court to try him for war crimes. France’s investigation into five missing Frenchmen in Chile is affecting him, but no charges will be brought against him in The Hague.

Kissinger, who was recently interviewed about his critics’ accusations, called them “a reflection of their ignorance.” And he always defended his actions because they were aimed at the highest good, peace. “For the realist—he wrote in his Nobel acceptance speech—peace represents a stable power settlement; for the idealist, it is a goal so transcendent that it belies the difficulty of finding ways to achieve it. But in the age of thermonuclear technology, neither perspective can guarantee human protection. Peace is the ideal.” “Instead, it must be enforced. A sense of responsibility and compromise must guide the behavior of all nations. A common concept of justice can and must be found, for otherwise all we will be doing is waging more ‘just’ wars.”

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