Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has reportedly died, according to The Washington Post.
The statesman passed away at the age of 100 at his Connecticut home, according to a statement from his consulting firm, which did not give a cause of death..
Kissinger was the only person ever to be White House national security adviser and secretary of state at the same time, exercising a control over U.S. foreign policy that has rarely been equaled by anyone who was not president.
He notably helped create the “post-World War II world order,” leading the United States through significant foreign policy challenges, according to Kissinger’s website.
Mr. Kissinger, who met with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping during a surprise visit to Beijing on July 20, is revered in China for having engineered the opening of relations between the CCP and Washington under President Nixon during the Cold War in the early 1970s.
However, he was not universally acclaimed...
...with two of the most vociferous critics, Christopher Hitchens and William Shawcross, also branding Dr. Kissinger a war criminal.
Journalist Seymour M. Hersh, in “The Price of Power,” said Dr. Kissinger and Nixon were basically two of a kind:
They “remained blind to the human costs of their actions. The dead and maimed in Vietnam and Cambodia - as in Chile, Bangladesh, Biafra and the Middle East - seemed not to count as the President and his national security adviser battled the Soviet Union, their misconceptions, their political enemies, and each other.”
At the very least, those who did not admire Dr. Kissinger felt that his focus on Cold War realities and his willingness to use force - openly or covertly - to advance U.S. objectives blinded him to humanitarian and human rights considerations.
Laud him or loathe him, we do note that in the last few months of life, he dropped some uncomfortable truths for today's politicians...
Henry Kissinger: “It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts” pic.twitter.com/CulDSiQDxq
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 12, 2023
WaPo reports that in his comprehensive biography of Dr. Kissinger, journalist Walter Isaacson came to the conclusion that he “had an instinctive feel for power and for creating a new global balance that could help America cope with its withdrawal syndrome after Vietnam. But it was not matched by a similar feel for the strength to be derived from the openness of America’s democratic system or for the moral values that are the true source of its global influence.”
Isaacson, who had full access to Dr. Kissinger and many of his friends, described him as “brilliant, conspiratorial, furtive, sensitive to linkages and nuances, prone to rivalries and power struggles, charming yet at times deceitful.”
