Henry Kissinger
Dr. Henry Alfred Kissinger (born May 27, 1923 as Heinz Alfred Kissinger) is a German-born American diplomat and statesman. He served as National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State in the Nixon administration, continuing in the latter position after Gerald Ford became President in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
An admirer of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this time, he pioneered the policy of détente that led to a significant relaxation in U.S.-Soviet tensions, including the SALT I strategic arms reduction talks, and played a crucial role in 1972 talks with Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai that concluded with the "opening" of China and the formation of a new strategic anti-Soviet Sino-American alliance.
Kissinger and North Vietnamese foreign minister Le Duc Tho were jointly offered the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for their roles in negotiating a ceasefire and U.S. withdrawal from the protracted Vietnam War. Le Duc Tho declined the award, Kissinger accepted, but did not attend the ceremony.
He maintained friendly diplomatic relationships with anti-Communist military dictatorships in the Southern Cone and elsewhere in Latin America, and approved of covert intervention in Chilean politics. He has been accused of complicity and encouragement in the atrocities committed by the Argentine military junta, and has evaded several arrest warrants for questioning on charges of crimes against humanity. [1],[2]
During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations he cut a flamboyant figure, appearing at social occasions with many of America's most celebrated beauties. His foreign policy record made him enemies amongst anti-war liberals and conservative anti-Communist hawks alike; controversy surrounding Kissinger has by no means receded in the years since.
With the recent declassification of Nixon and Ford administration documents relating to U.S. policy toward South America and East Timor, Kissinger has come under fire from certain journalists and human rights advocacy groups, both in the U.S. and abroad. Several have accused him of having committed war crimes; author/journalist Christopher Hitchens is perhaps most prominent among the accusers. Although these allegations have not been proven in any court of law, there are jurisdictions that have contemplated legal action against him.
Personal background
Kissinger was born in Fürth in Franconia (Bavaria) as Heinz Alfred Kissinger into a Jewish family. In 1938, fleeing Adolf Hitler's persecution, his family moved to New York, New York. Kissinger was naturalized a U.S. citizen on June 19, 1943.
He spent his high school years in the Washington Heights section of upper Manhattan but never lost his pronounced German accent. Kissinger attended George Washington High School at night and worked in a shaving-brush factory during the day. While attending City College of New York, in 1943, he was drafted into the army, trained at Clemson College in South Carolina, and became a German interpreter for the 970th Counter Intelligence Corps.
Henry Kissinger received his B.A. degree summa cum laude at Harvard College in 1950, where he studied under William Yandell Elliot. Kissinger is rumored to be the only person to receive a perfect grade point average from Harvard, but in fact he received one B in his senior year. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University in 1952 and 1954, respectively. His doctoral dissertation was titled A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812–22. Kissinger's doctoral dissertation was a continuation of his undergraduate thesis of mere 383 pages consequently prompting the "Kissinger rule" or one-third that length.
A liberal Republican and keen to have a greater influence on American foreign policy, Kissinger became a supporter of and advisor to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who sought the Republican nomination for President in 1960, 1964 and 1968. After Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968, he offered Kissinger the job of national security adviser.
With his first wife, Ann Fleischer, he had two children, Elizabeth and David. He currently lives with his second wife, Nancy Maginnes Kissinger, in Kent, Connecticut. He is the head of Kissinger and Associates, a consulting firm.
Kissinger is well known as being a New York Yankees fan. He is also a great fan of the German soccer club Greuther Fürth from his home town.
Foreign policy
Under Nixon, Kissinger served as National Security Advisor from 1969 to 1973 and then Secretary of State until 1977, staying on board as Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford following Nixon's 1974 resignation in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
Détente and the opening of China
As National Security Advisor under Nixon, Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, seeking a relaxation in tensions between the two superpowers. As a part of this strategy, he negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (culminating in the SALT I treaty) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
Kissinger also sought to place diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union; to accomplish this, he made two secret trips to the People's Republic of China in July and October 1971 to confer with Premier Zhou Enlai, then in charge of Chinese foreign policy under Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong. This set the stage for the groundbreaking 1972 summit between the PRC and the US as well as the normalization of relations between the two countries, ending 23 years of diplomatic isolation and mutual hostility and resulting in the formation of a strategic anti-Soviet Sino-American alliance. Today, Kissinger is often remembered by Chinese leaders as "the old friend of the Chinese people." The talks between Kissinger and Zhou were highly secretive; recently declassified documents show that the talk highly focused on the Taiwan issue.
Vietnamization and the Cambodian bombing campaign
Nixon had been elected in 1968 on the promise of achieving "peace with honor" and ending the Vietnam War. Once in office, he began implementing a policy of Vietnamization that aimed to gradually withdraw U.S. troops while expanding the combat role of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) so that it would be capable of independently defending South Vietnam against the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam and North Vietnamese Army (NVA.) At the same time, Kissinger, with Nixon's support, played a key role in expanding American bombing campaigns into Cambodia to target NVA and Viet Cong units launching raids against the South. The bombing campaign was initially secret and ignited significant anti-war protests in the U.S., particularly at university campuses, when it became known. The bombing campaign also inadvertently contributed to the chaos of the Cambodian Civil War, which saw the country's republican forces unable to defeat the growing Khmer Rouge insurgency that would emerge victorious in 1975.
Kissinger was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize along with diplomatic North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho for their work in negotiating a ceasefire between the South and the North. Kissinger accepted the award, but Tho declined, claiming that a true peace had not been reached. The ceasefire was broken in 1975 when the NVA invaded and occupied South Vietnam, establishing a united Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976 with Hanoi as its capital.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War
In 1973, Kissinger negotiated the end to the Yom Kippur War, which had begun with a surprise attack against Israel by Egyptian and surrounding Arab armies during Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish holiday. Though Israel regained the territory it had lost, Kissinger pressured the Israelis to cede land to the Arabs, contributing to the first phases of a lasting Israeli-Egyptian peace. The move saw a warming in U.S.-Egyptian relations, bitter since the '50s, as the country moved away from its former pro-Soviet stance and into a close partnership with the United States. The peace was finalized in 1978 when U.S. president Jimmy Carter mediated the Camp David Accords, during which Israel returned the Sinai in exchange for an Egyptian agreement to recognize Israeli statehood and end hostility.
Latin American policy
Normal relations with Latin America were continued, and the United States continued to recognize and maintain relationships with anti-communist and non-communist governments, democratic and authoritarian alike. In 1970, Chilean Socialist presidential candidate Salvador Allende was elected by a narrow plurality, causing serious concern from Washington due to his openly Marxist and pro-Cuban politics. While Kissinger and the Nixon administration initially were considering authorizing the CIA to provoke a military coup that would prevent Allende's inauguration and presumably call new elections, the plan was aborted because the administration doubted any of the willing factions had a chance.
U.S.-Chilean relations remained frosty during Allende's tenure; following the complete nationalization of the partially U.S.-owned copper mines and the Chilean subsidiary of the U.S.-based ITT, as well as other Chilean businesses, the U.S. implemented partial economic sanctions, claiming that the Chilean government had greatly undervalued fair compensation for the nationalization by subtracting what it deemed "excess profits." The CIA provided funding for the mass anti-government strikes in 1972 and 1973. In September 1973, Allende committed suicide during a military coup launched by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet, who became President. During a later visit to Chile, Kissinger told Pinochet that the U.S. was concerned about the junta's human rights violations but was sympathetic to its anti-communist stance. U.S.-Chilean relations significantly improved and remained warm until Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976 and implemented a tough stance against any state that violated human rights, regardless of its friendliness toward America.
Kissinger initially supported the normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations, broken since 1961. However, in 1975, a democratic left-wing coup took place in Portugal; the new government proceeded to quickly give up its former colonies, leaving a power vacuum in the southern African states of Angola and Mozambique. Fidel Castro ordered Cuban troops into the two countries and successfully assisted the Marxist-Leninist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) guerrilla organizations in taking power. Cuban troops remained to support the two governments and protect them against the National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) insurgencies. Kissinger made it clear that unless Cuba withdrew its forces from Angola and Mozambique relations would not be normalized.
Kissinger took a similar line that he had toward Chile when the Argentine military toppled the weak government of Isabel Perón in 1976 and consolidated power, launching brutal reprisals and "disappearances" against suspected extreme-left terrorists and dissidents. During a meeting with Argentine foreign minister César Augusto Guzzetti, Kissinger assured him that the United States was an ally, but urged him to "get back to normal procedures" quickly before the U.S. Congress reconvened and had a chance to consider sanctions.
East Timor
The Portuguese decolonization process that had brought the U.S.'s attention to the newly-independent Angola and Mozambique also brought American attention to the small but densely populated newly-independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor in the Indonesian archipalego. Indonesian president Suharto was a strong American ally in the Pacific and began to mobilize the army, preparing to annex the nascent state, which had become increasingly dominated by the popular leftist and Chinese-supported FRETILIN party. In December 1975, Suharto discussed the invasion plans during a meeting with Kissinger and President Ford in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Both Ford and Kissinger made clear that U.S. relations with Indonesia would remain strong and that it would not object to the proposed annexation. U.S. arms sales to Indonesia continued, and Suharto went ahead with the annexation plan, meeting fierce resistance from the native East Timorese. The army responded with indiscriminate massacres; it is said that some 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives during the occupation due to starvation and army massacres. The Indonesian government's recognition of East Timor as the province of Timor Timur was not accepted internationally. Repression on the part of the military and its collaborators was especially intense during the initial invasion and following a UN-supervised East Timorese vote for independence in March 1999. East Timor achieved independence in late 1999. The U.S. maintained friendly diplomatic ties with Suharto during the '90s, but with the end of the Cold War felt more free to criticize the regime for its actions in East Timor.
Personality and public perception
Kissinger, like the rest of the Nixon administration, faced extreme unpopularity with the anti-war Left, particularly after the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia was revealed. However, few doubted his intellect and diplomatic skill, and he became one of the better-liked members of the Nixon administration, which many Americans grew to view as cynical and self-serving. Kissinger was not connected with the Watergate scandal that would eventually ruin Nixon and many of his closest aides; this greatly increased Kissinger's reputation as he became known as the "clean man" of the bunch. At the height of his popularity he was even regarded as something of a sex symbol and seen dating such starlets as Jill St. John, Shirley MacLaine, and Candice Bergen. There was even discussion of ending the requirement that a U.S. president be born in America so that Kissinger could have a chance to run.
Kissinger left office when former Democratic Georgian governor and "Washington outsider" Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential elections. Carter was defeated by Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980, but in the '80s and early '90s Kissinger played a relatively minor role in the U.S. government, because the neoconservatives who had come to dominate the Republican Party, the Reagan administration, and to a lesser extent the first Bush administration from 1981 to 1993 considered détente to be a policy of accommodation for the Soviet Union. Kissinger continued to participate in policy groups such as the Trilateral Commission and to do political consulting, speaking, and writing. He would often appear as a foreign-policy commentator on American broadcast networks.
In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed Kissinger to chair a committee to investigate the events of the September 11 attacks. This led to criticism from Congressional Democrats who accused Kissinger of being secretive and not supportive of the public's right to know. Leading Democrats insisted that Kissinger file financial disclosures to reveal any conflicts of interest. Both Bush and Kissinger claimed that Kissinger did not need to file such forms, since he would not be receiving a salary. However, following continual Democratic pressure, Kissinger cited conflicts of interest with his clients and stepped down as chairman on December 13, 2002.
In 2005, Kissinger offered a public apology for using foul language in 1971 to describe Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and Indians in general. Declassified transcripts show that Kissinger had disparaged the independence movement in East Pakistan, predicting that an independent Bangladesh would become a failed third world country. The comments underscored U.S. hostility toward India, supportive of the Bengali guerrillas and backed by the Soviet Union. The Pakistani Army violently suppressed the independence movement in the East, causing an influx of Bengali refugees into India and exacerbating longstanding Indo-Pakistani tensions. Pakistani forces were eventually forced to withdraw and an independent Bangladesh was established in East Pakistan's place. Despite international condemnation of the conduct of Pakistani forces during the conflict, U.S.-Pakistani relations remained strong based on concerns of growing Indian and Soviet hegemony in the region. (see Bangladesh Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971)
Accusations of war crimes and legal difficulties
A revival of interest in Henry Kissinger came during the new millenium, when journalist and political gadfly Christopher Hitchens wrote The Trial of Henry Kissinger, a scathing critique of Kissinger's policy that accused him of war crimes, particularly for his policy toward Vietnam and Cambodia. Kissinger became a focal point of criticism from the political Left and certain human rights NGOs. The Trial of Henry Kissinger was later adapted into a documentary that predominantly featured Hitchens as narrator.
On May 31, 2001, French judge Roger Le Loire requested a summons served on Kissinger while he was staying at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. Loire claimed to want to question Kissinger for alleged U.S. involvement in Operation Condor as well as the death of French nationals under the Chilean junta. As a result, Kissinger left Paris that evening, and Loire's inquiries were directed to the U.S. State Department.
In July 2001, the Chilean high court granted investigating judge Juan Guzman the right to question Kissinger about the 1973 killing of American journalist Charles Horman, whose execution at the hands of the Chilean military following the coup was dramatized in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film, Missing. The judge’s questions were relayed to Kissinger via diplomatic routes but went unanswered.
In August 2001, Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba sent a letter rogatory to the US State Department, in accordance with the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), requesting a deposition by Kissinger to aid the judge's investigation of Operation Condor. [3]
On September 10, 2001, a civil suit was filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court by the family of Gen. René Schneider, former Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, asserting that Kissinger gave the order for the elimination of Schneider because he refused to endorse plans for a military coup. Schneider was killed by coup-plotters loyal to General Roberto Viaux in a botched kidnapping attempt, but U.S. involvement with the plot is disputed, as declassified transcripts show that Nixon and Kissinger had ordered the coup "turned off" a week prior to the killing, fearing that Viaux had no chance. As a part of the suit, Schneider’s two sons are attempting to sue Kissinger and then-CIA director Richard Helms for $3 million.
On September 11, 2001, the 28th anniversary of the Pinochet coup, Chilean human rights lawyers filed a criminal case against Kissinger along with Augusto Pinochet, former Bolivian general and president Hugo Banzer, former Argentine general and dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, and former Paraguayan president Alfredo Stroessner for alleged involvement in Operation Condor. The case was brought on behalf of some fifteen victims of Operation Condor, ten of whom were Chilean.
In late 2001, the Brazilian government canceled an invitation for Kissinger to speak in São Paulo because it could no longer guarantee his immunity from judicial action.
In 2002, during a brief visit to the UK, a petition for Kissinger's arrest was filed by the High Court in London based on Indochinese civilian casualties and environmental damage resulting from U.S. bombing campaigns in North Vietnam and Cambodia in the period between 1969 and 1975. Simulatenously, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who had engaged in a failed attempt to get Pinochet extradited from the United Kingdom for questioning, requested that Interpol detain Kissinger for questioning. British authorities refused his request.
East Timor Action Network (ETAN) activists have repeatedly sought to question Kissinger during his book tours for his role in the Ford administration in supporting the Indonesian occupation of the country in 1975.
The charges against Kissinger are not especially well-known in America outside of staunch left-wing circles and human-rights advocacy groups. While Hitchens and those who support his charges have been vocal in their criticism of Kissinger, he is still generally remembered as an intellectual and a skilled diplomat, although the accusations did bring him back into the spotlight and tarnish his reputation amongst certain Americans. Because of previous international attempts by European and South American judges to question him, he is known to take legal advice before traveling to certain countries in either continent.
In 2005, the State Department released tapes of conversations between Nixon and Kissinger which indicated Kissinger had knowledge of the [[1971] Bangladesh Genocide, and that he strove to keep it out of the media and keep India from intervening. The Nixon administration considered it more important to support Pakistan during the crisis, because it was a SEATO and CENTO ally, against non-aligned India.
Business interests and public service
Kissinger owns a consulting firm, Kissinger and Associates, and is a partner in Kissinger McLarty Associates with Mack McLarty, former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton. He also serves on various boards of directors, including Hollinger International, a Chicago-based newspaper group.
In 1998, Kissinger became an honorary citizen of Fürth, Germany, his hometown. He has been a life-long supporter of the Spielvereinigung Fürth football club.
He has served as Chancellor of the College of William and Mary since February 10, 2001.
From 1995 to 2001 he served on the board of directors for Freeport-McMoRan, commonly known as "Freeport," a multinational copper and gold producer with significant mining and milling operations in Papua, Indonesia. He also serves as an honorary advisor to the United States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce.
Related articles
Partial bibliography
- Foreign policy
- Rescuing the World: The Life and Times of Leo Cherne by Andrew F. Smith, Henry A. Kissinger (2002) ISBN 0791453790
- Does America Need a Foreign Policy?: Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century (2001) ISBN 0684855674
- Diplomacy (Kissinger) (1994) ISBN 067165991X
- On Men and Power: A Political Memoir by Helmut Schmidt, Henry Kissinger (1990) ISBN 0224027158
- Observations: Selected Speeches and Essays 1982-1984 (1985) ISBN 0316496642
- For the Record: Selected Statements 1977-1980 (1981) ISBN 0316496634
- American Foreign Policy: Three Essays (1974) ISBN 0393055256
- A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22 (1973) ISBN 0395172292
- The Troubled Partnership: A Re-Appraisal of the Atlantic Alliance(1965) ISBN 0070348952
- The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy (1961) ISBN 0060124105
- Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957)
- Memoirs
- Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises: Based on the Record of Henry Kissinger's Hitherto Secret Telephone Conversations (2003) ISBN 0743249100
- Vietnam: A Personal History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (2002) ISBN 0743219163
- Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks With Beijing and Moscow by Henry Kissinger, William Burr (1999) ISBN 1565844807
- Years of Renewal (1999) ISBN 0684855712
- Years of Upheaval (1982) ISBN 0316285919
- The White House Years (1979) ISBN 0316496618
- Biographies
- The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy by Jussi M. Hanhimaki (2004) ISBN 0195172213
- The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens (2001) ISBN 1859846319
- Kissinger: A Biography by Walter Isaacson (1992) ISBN 0671663232
- The Nixon-Kissinger Years: Reshaping of America's Foreign Policy by Richard C. Thornton (1989) ISBN 0887020518
- The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House by Seymour Hersh (1983) ISBN 0671447602
- Kissinger by Marvin L. Kalb, Bernard Kalb (1974) ISBN 0316482218
- Kissinger on the Couch by Phyllis Schlafly (1974) ISBN 0870002163
- Kissinger: Portrait of a Mind by Stephen Richards Graubard (1973) ISBN 0393054810
External links
- Nobel Prize: Biography of Henry Kissinger
- The National Security Archive: The Kissinger Telcons
- The National Security Archive:The U.S. and the South Asian Crisis of 1971
- FAS: Kissinger Associates, BNL, and Iraq
- FAS: BCCI and Kissinger Associates
- Henry: Portrait of a Serial Kissinger – LA Weekly article on Hitchens's The Trial of Henry Kissinger
- NPR: Kissinger Speech at National Press Club. Towards the end [55:55], he responds to Hitchens.
- Kissinger's political donations
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