Ex-US Secretary of State turns 100: Henry Kissinger – the tough politician

Henry Kissinger played a key role in shaping US foreign policy in the 1970s. In 1973, the Fürth native received the Nobel Peace Prize. The work of the convinced transatlantic is controversial.

Even in old age, Henry Kissinger causes a stir and sometimes great outrage. “I think that by the end of the year we will be talking about negotiation processes and even actual negotiations,” he said in a television interview on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. In addition, “the chances are good” that China’s President Xi Jinping “takes my call”. This also applies to the Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, to whom he does not attribute sole responsibility for the Ukraine war in a “Zeit” interview.

Kissinger is even more worried about the increasing escalation in American-Chinese relations. “We are in a classic pre-war situation in which neither side has much leeway for political concessions,” he told The Economist.

Although Kissinger has not been at the forefront of US foreign policy for nearly half a century, his advice is still sought after. When time permits, top European politicians seek out Henry Kissinger to talk to him about foreign policy issues or to receive briefings on US domestic policy. For example, Sigmar Gabriel after taking office as Federal Foreign Minister in early February 2017. “To this day, Kissinger is a good advisor for good transatlantic relations between Germany, Europe and the United States,” said the SPD politician during his visit to the United States.

Meeting with Sigmar Gabriel in 2014.

(Photo: picture alliance / dpa)

Even President Donald Trump, who is said to have a certain reluctance to give advice, met with Kissinger before taking office to take a foreign policy lesson. And this despite the fact that die-hard Republican Kissinger spoke out against the real estate billionaire in the 2016 election campaign. Kissinger explained his decision that Trump’s competitor Hillary Clinton was the candidate among the candidates who stood for the “traditional, outward-looking, internationalist model” of US foreign policy. Isolationism and protectionism are not his thing. Kissinger favors a well-functioning transatlantic link between the United States and Europe.

It is the personal experiences of the scion of a Jewish family that should determine his later political actions, because as a child he experienced the Hitler dictatorship in Germany. “I didn’t suffer from it like my parents did,” he once said. Born on May 27, 1923 in Fürth, Franconia, Heinz Alfred Kissinger emigrated to the United States with his parents and younger brother in 1938, and Heinz became Henry. Relatives of the Kissingers who remain in Germany are murdered by the Nazis. Despite all this, Kissinger’s connection to his hometown remains – and to the Greuther Fürth game association, whose first division home game against FC Schalke 04 he attended at the old age of 89 from the stands.

Fascinated by foreign policy

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Meeting of the Elder Statesmen: Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Kissinger at a meeting in 2012.

(Photo: dpa)

Kissinger’s relationship with Germany remained close, he harbored no feelings of revenge – not even when he first returned as a US soldier towards the end of the Second World War. Kissinger, who first went to Krefeld and then to Bensheim in Hesse, headed a counter-espionage department, helped to set up the administration, investigate war crimes and promote denazification. The young man believes the Germans are capable of building a functioning democratic system.

Kissinger’s life is politics. The Franconian should make it to the foreign minister, more was not possible for a person not born in the USA. And foreign policy fascinated the young Kissinger, who did his doctorate at Harvard University in Cambridge/Massachusetts and later taught there. Helmut Schmidt, who remained closely associated with Kissinger until his death in November 2015, refers to his book “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy”. For the Federal Chancellor, who was in office from 1974 to 1982, it is one of the most important works for understanding the strategy of deterrence. So it is only logical that Kissinger not only pursues a teaching activity, but also dives into the depths of politics at the same time. He is an advisor to the New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and deals intensively with arms control and disarmament issues. His work and advice did not go unnoticed in the White House either. Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as well as their Republican successor Richard Nixon appreciate the strategist.

“He demanded perfection”

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Consultation with Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and White House Administrator Alexander Haig (1973 archive image).

(Photo: picture-alliance/ dpa)

However, Kissinger only came into power after Nixon took office in early 1969. He actually didn’t think much of the new President, whose complicated personality structure also caused problems for other employees. But Nixon, who “inherits” the Vietnam War from Johnson, had promised during the election campaign to bring back the American soldiers from Southeast Asia and to negotiate a “peace with honor”. However, Nixon is completely overwhelmed with this task, especially since communist North Vietnam, together with the South Vietnamese Vietcong, refuses to accept the Thieu regime in Saigon, as demanded by the US President. Kissinger becomes Nixon’s national security adviser.

His co-workers don’t particularly like Kissinger, and he doesn’t have many friends at all. “He was a tough and demanding boss. He demanded perfection,” says Kissinger’s aide Brent Scowcroft, who later served as national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr. It is the time of the secret diplomacy that Kissinger has to pursue on Nixon’s orders. At the same time, in order to achieve the goal of an honorable peace in Vietnam, the USA is stepping up air raids on North Vietnam and expanding the war on Cambodia.

Nobel Peace Prize and dirty hands in Chile

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Kissinger with Le Duc Tho after the conclusion of the Vietnam negotiations on January 25, 1973 in Paris.

(Photo: picture alliance / dpa)

Peace negotiator and conflict intensifier at the same time – Kissinger calls it realpolitik, which should lead to the desired result. The North Vietnamese Le Duc Tho becomes his most important interlocutor. The negotiations lead to the 1973 Peace Treaty of Paris. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho receive the Nobel Peace Prize for this, which the man from Hanoi, unlike Kissinger, rejects because the war is not over yet. The US eventually pulls out of the war, two years later the Washington-backed regime in Saigon collapses and the communists take power across Vietnam.

Kissinger, who demoted US Secretary of State William P. Rogers to the rank of extra, turned even bigger wheels of global politics on behalf of Nixon. So in 1971 he secretly traveled to China to prepare for the normalization of relations with the Middle Kingdom. The following year, Nixon was received by China’s aged ruler Mao Zedong. This spectacular visit opens a new chapter in US-Chinese relations. At the same time, he prepared the Nixon summit with the Soviet party leader Leonid Brezhnev, who signed the Salt I treaty on strategic arms limitation and the ABM treaty on the limitation of strategic missiles in Moscow in 1972.

But Kissinger’s secret diplomacy also aims to play off the warring communist powers of the Soviet Union and China against each other. He plays masterfully on this diplomatic keyboard. Getting the maximum out of every situation, morality has no place in realpolitik: this is what characterizes Kissinger’s actions as Secretary of State under Nixon and his successor Ford. His role in the military coup against the socialist Allende government in Chile in 1973 even resulted in court summonses in several countries. Kissinger ignores her. According to him, the plan to overthrow President Allende came from Nixon. However, the CIA operations in Chile are said to have been coordinated with Kissinger, because the secret service was subordinate to the National Security Council and thus to Kissinger.

Shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East

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1975 with President Ford and Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller.

(Photo: picture-alliance/ dpa)

This is now dealing with another source of fire. In 1973/74 Kissinger played a major role in the peace efforts between the Israelis and the Arab countries. He negotiates the end of the Yom Kippur War. With the Geneva Middle East Conference, Kissinger initiates the first direct encounter between the warring parties. This is associated with intensive travel between the conflicting parties. One speaks of Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy.

Kissinger is undoubtedly a kind of pop star of international politics at the time. This also helps him in 1974 to politically survive the inglorious end of the Nixon era with the Watergate affair. According to his own statements, he has nothing to do with Watergate. “How could that happen?” Kissinger asks in a public way. He has to experience how his President talks his head and neck and finally has to leave the White House in disgrace. Because the affair paralyzed Nixon politically and almost condemned him to an inability to act, his Secretary of State experienced a further increase in power.

But this phase is short-lived. Kissinger remains head of the State Department under President Ford. However, there are tensions with important people in Ford’s immediate environment. Kissinger becomes a “normal” political figure who has to submit to cabinet discipline. The dwindling political influence hurts Kissinger. Ford’s 1976 election defeat by Democrat Jimmy Carter also spelled his end as Secretary of State.

Also a hate figure

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger makes a speech during the memorial service for the late former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt at St. Michael's Church (Sankt Michaelis church) in Hamburg, Germany, November 23, 2015. Schmidt died on November 10, aged 96. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz/Pool

At the funeral service for Helmut Schmidt in November 2015.

(Photo: REUTERS)

Things are getting quieter around Henry Kissinger. From 1977 to 1981 he was director of the US think tank Council on Foreign Relations. He advises Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and founds his own consulting firm in New York: “Kissinger Associates Inc.”. His customers include corporations from all over the world. Kissinger makes a lot of money from it. He is a participant in the legendary Bilderberg conferences. In addition, there are well-paid lectures and trips, which, among other things, repeatedly lead him to Helmut Schmidt in Hamburg. Kissinger says of the former Chancellor at his coffin: “He was a kind of world conscience.”

He can’t claim that for himself. The US support for military coups and dictatorships during his tenure also made Kissinger a hate figure. In the eyes of his political opponents, he is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and a criminal in one person. He himself never bothered to approach his critics. Kissinger also gives an explanation: “The Realpolitiker believes in values, but he also knows what is feasible.”

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