Controversial former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has passed away aged 100 on Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, reported Reuters referencing a statement from his geopolitical consulting firm, Kissinger Associates Inc.
In his explosive book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens argued that Kissinger should have been prosecuted for crimes against humanity and also held responsible for the bloody invasion of Cyprus.
Kissinger’s reign as the prime architect of U.S. foreign policy waned with Nixon’s resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal. Still, he continued to be a diplomatic force as secretary of state under Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford, and to offer strong opinions throughout the rest of his life.
While many hailed Kissinger for his brilliance and broad experience, others branded him a war criminal for his support for anti-communist dictatorships, especially in Latin America. In his later years, his travels were circumscribed by efforts by other nations to arrest or question him about past U.S. foreign policy.
His 1973 Peace Prize – awarded jointly to North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho, who would decline it – was among the most controversial ever. Two members of the Nobel committee resigned over the selection as questions arose about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia.
Ford called Kissinger a “super secretary of state” but also noted his prickliness and self-assurance, which critics were more likely to call paranoia and egotism. Even Ford said, “Henry in his mind never made a mistake.”
“He had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew,” Ford said in an interview shortly before his death in 2006.
With his dour expression and gravelly, German-accented voice, Kissinger possessed an image of both a stuffy academic and a ladies’ man, squiring starlets around Washington and New York in his bachelor days. Power, he said, was the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Concerning policy, Kissinger was reticent on personal matters, although he once told a journalist he saw himself as a cowboy hero, riding off alone.
with Reuters
