Henry Kissinger

Henry Alfred Kissinger (English: Henry Alfred Kissinger; May 27, 1923 - November 29, 2023) was an American politician, diplomat, and political scientist. He was highly used in the Richard Nixon administration and served as national security adviser and secretary of state. After the Watergate incident, he stayed in the Gerald Ford administration and continued to dominate U.S. foreign policy. Kissinger was a Jew born in Germany. When he was 15 years old, he immigrated to the United States with his parents to escape Nazi persecution. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and was educated at Harvard University after the war, becoming a professor of government and earning an international reputation as an expert on nuclear weapons and foreign policy. Before being appointed national security adviser, he served as an adviser to government agencies, think tanks, and the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon. Kissinger pursued realpolitik and played a central role in U.S. foreign policy, especially "triangular diplomacy" from 1969 to 1977. During this period, he advocated a policy of détente, which eased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. He secretly visited China in 1971 and played a crucial role in talks with Zhou Enlai, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, paving the way for Nixon's visit to China in 1972 and promoting a new strategic Sino-US anti-Soviet alliance. He won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize together with Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho. After President Ford lost re-election in 1976, Kissinger became a professor at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. Kissinger passed away at home on November 29, 2023, at the age of 100. Kissinger is recognized as a theorist of world order and realist power balance in international relations. His theory mainly focuses on how to use national diplomatic means to establish political alliances in the international environment of bipolar confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union to resist the pressure of the Soviet Union. That is, the United States unites various forces to contain the Soviet Union, thereby achieving a relative balance between the two poles. Later, Kissinger's theory was also applied to a wider range of foreign relations, and was typically reflected in the foreign policies of US Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.