Henry Kissinger’s Divisive Legacy

Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has died aged 100, leaving a long but polarizing legacy as a sage of U.S. foreign policy.

While many view him as one of the great diplomatic thinkers of the 20th century, his critics have questioned various decisions he made while in power, as well as his seeming prioritization of pragmatism over morality.

Called on for advice by many presidents, including George W. Bush and Donald Trump, he was regarded among many American political elites as a font of enduring wisdom on how the nation should approach geopolitics in the post-World War II era.

David Rothkopf, a foreign policy commentator who once worked for Kissinger Associates, wrote following the man’s death that he found it remarkable how many world leaders came to him for advice even though “his contributions were as manifold as his errors,” adding: “Virtually every national security advisor since Kissinger had worked directly for him or worked for someone who worked directly for him.”

Former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger on January 21, 2020 in Berlin, Germany and, inset, the town of Neak Luong in Cambodia, in ruins following an erroneous American bombing on August 6, 1973 that caused 137 deaths and 268 injuries. Adam Berry/Getty Images

A German-born Jew who fled his native nation for the U.S. after the rise of Adolf Hitler, Kissinger pioneered the adoption of “Realpolitik”—an approach to diplomacy based on pragmatism rather than moral or political ideology—and “shuttle diplomacy,” constantly traveling between disputing parties to act as an intermediary and seek concessions from them.

But these doctrines led him to take controversial positions at the height of his power. Under Nixon, he held both the role of secretary of state and national security adviser—making him the key decision-making node of U.S. foreign policy at the height of the Cold War. In a 1972 interview, Kissinger described himself as a “cowboy” who “rides into town and does everything himself.”

His tenure saw him pursue détente with the Soviet Union and China—thawing relations with the latter and negotiating the first nuclear arms treaty with the former—while influencing other, smaller nations in a bid to limit the spread of communism.

This left him accused of supporting bloody coups in Chile and Argentina, in which the South American nations’ respective militaries violently suppressed elected governments, and Kissinger publicly cooperated with the far-right Portuguese dictatorship while it was seeking to retain its colonies.

While in the White House, he also offered America’s support to the then-military dictatorship of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in late 1975 allowed Indonesia to annex the former Portuguese colony of East Timor. This precipitated what many consider a genocide of over 100,000 people, and the country did not gain full independence until 2002.

But by far his most divisive work was stewarding America through the final years of the war in Vietnam. He played a key role in the bombing of Cambodia, despite it not being directly involved in the war, which was conducted in a bid to stop North Vietnamese forces conducting raids from the country.

Kissinger negotiated the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, which achieved a ceasefire with North Vietnam and the withdrawal of U.S. forces. He was awarded that year’s Nobel Peace Prize, a decision that was so controversial that two members of the judging committee left in protest.

“He’s a thug, and a crook, and a liar, and a pseudo-intellectual and a murderer. All those things are factually verifiable,” the late author and journalist Christopher Hitchens said of the former secretary of state in an interview in 2001, around the same time he called for Kissinger to be tried as a war criminal.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, himself a controversial figure over the war in Iraq, said following Kissinger’s death that “if it is possible for diplomacy, at its highest level, to be a form of art, Henry was an artist.”

Kissinger also used his shuttle diplomacy to negotiate settlements at the end of the Yom Kippur War between Israel, Egypt and Syria, and used geopolitical pressure to push for an end to white minority rule in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

Historian Niall Ferguson wrote of Kissinger in an article for the Sunday Times upon his centenary in May: “It’s your world… We just live in it.”

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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