Loved and hated, Henry Kissinger was the pragmatist who tried to solve world’s problems
HENRY KISSINGER had many distinctions in his life.
Not the least of these was that he remained politically aware and active right up to his death at 100 today.
It was an astonishing life, filled with astonishing achievement.
He had been walking history for the best part of 60 years.
Whenever we met on his regular visits to London I was always amazed.
Here was a man who had seen action in the Second World War, not least at the Battle of the Bulge.
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The young Henry was an exile from Hitler’s Germany, leaving with his family just in time in 1938.
But he returned to his country of origin only a few years later in the uniform of an American GI.
His letter home to his parents expressing his pride in this — in returning to Germany as an American — is one of the great letters of the last century.
After his period of service he returned to America for a life in academia.
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But the politics of the university would never be enough for him.
His talents were spotted by Nelson Rockefeller, the would-be Republican nominee for president.
Lone cowboy
Rockefeller failed, but Kissinger’s skills had been recognised.
Not least by Richard Nixon, who won the election in 1968 and promptly invited Kissinger to be his national security adviser.
Nixon did not trust many people, but Kissinger became one of the few that he did.
Kissinger’s reputation internationally was almost bigger than that of his boss.
He became known not just as a genius of international politics but almost as a movie star.
He was often seen in the company of glamorous women — including Princess Diana in 1995 — and he seemed to enjoy the unlikely limelight.
Very occasionally this got to his head.
In one interview he unwisely said that he sometimes had an image of himself being the lone cowboy riding into town.
He subsequently described this interview as the single most catastrophic exchange he had ever had with the Press.
A wounded Richard Nixon refused to speak to him for days.
But that was unusual. In general Kissinger was the consummate diplomat and global statesman.
He had his critics, of course — a legion of them.
But without being responsible for America heading into Vietnam he did manage to wind the war down, arguably in the least catastrophic way possible at the time.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in Indochina.
And he was also noted for being the person who opened up China to America and the wider world.
After Nixon’s downfall in the Watergate scandal Kissinger became Secretary of State under Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford.
His view of the world was one which took in everything from every possible angle.
There were risks to opening up with China, obviously.
But there were also advantages, not least the opportunity to prise the country away from the Soviet bloc during the Cold War.
His policy in Vietnam proved highly controversial.
And historians have been debating for almost six decades whether Kissinger was right to advocate the bombing of Vietnamese forces gathered over the border in Cambodia.
Some of Dr Kissinger’s critics came around to his point of view.
Others saw him as the epitome of an almost comic-book warmonger.
Monty Python even wrote a song attacking him.
But he was a more complex thinker and figure than most gave him credit for.
His soft-spoken, Germanic voice became the stuff of popular culture.
But he truly possessed one of the most remarkable minds.
That he lived into the internet age was amazing, but that he understood it was more remarkable still.
I remember him saying to me that the marvel of the internet was that all this information was there, now, free, for anyone in the world to access it.
“But where is the wisdom?” he asked.
And he was more than just a walking encyclopedia of past events.
When I last saw him in London he discussed Nixon’s downfall and Congress’s pulling of the budget for the war in Vietnam as though both things had only happened yesterday.
But he also remained an astute observer of current events.
Into his 90s he continued to travel, write, speak and negotiate — and even managed a trip to meet China’s President Xi Jinping this summer, two months after he turned 100.
Every American president called on his wisdom and advice at some point.
British and other politicians often did likewise.
And that was not because he was an ideologue. He wasn’t. It was because he was a fine-tuned analyst.
Complex questions
He could look at a problem in the round, probe at the complex questions within it then suggest the least worst solutions.
Only last week in Israel I was discussing with someone whether a regional solution to the question of Gaza is possible.
The person I was speaking with immediately said: “If only we had a Henry Kissinger to broker such a deal.”
He was right. People already missed him before we lost him. His reputation will be fought over for a very long time.
He was a man of pragmatism and insight, easy to misrepresent and even easier to demonise.
But the world he had come from was a world that almost burned to the ground.
And he spent the better part of his life trying to make sure it didn’t happen again.
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There were no perfect outcomes, but through his diplomacy he tried to ensure not perfection but stability.
Because without that, anything — including the worst things imaginable — can happen. Kissinger already felt like he belonged to the ages. Now he does.
