It was that act that, decades later, led Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to describe Kissinger as “one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country” in a televised Democratic primary debate with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February 2016.
Illustrating Kissinger’s continued divisiveness well into his 90s, Clinton had been criticized by progressives during the campaign after she called her Nixon-era predecessor a “friend” on whom she had relied for political advice.
Others went further in their criticisms.
The late author Christopher Hitchens was among those who believed Kissinger should have been prosecuted for war crimes, as he argued in the 2001 book “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” Joseph Heller, the author of the scabrous anti-war novel “Catch-22,” memorably described Kissinger in a 1979 book as “an odious shlump who made war gladly.”
Cambodia is not the only country where Kissinger’s legacy is one of violence and chaos. He is accused of supporting Pakistan’s military regime during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 and backing the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. Better known, perhaps, is his role in helping Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet overthrow the country’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, in 1973.
Kissinger feared that Allende’s “successful elected Marxist government” could create an “insidious” precedent that threatened American global power, he told Nixon in a briefing published in 2013 by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research institute.
Watergate and beyond
Nixon was re-elected to a second term in the White House in 1972, but his presidency was soon engulfed by the Watergate scandal, which eroded his popular standing and congressional support.
Facing the threat of impeachment, Nixon decided to resign in August 1974. The night before Nixon formally submitted his resignation letter to Kissinger, the two men reportedly knelt together and prayed for peace.
Nixon left office on Aug. 9, 1974. He was succeeded by his vice president, Gerald Ford; Kissinger stayed on as Ford’s top diplomat. In the Ford years, Kissinger came under more intense criticism across the American political spectrum, and some of his key initiatives — most notably détente — started to collapse. South Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1975.
Kissinger served until the end of Ford’s term in January 1977.
Upon leaving public service, Kissinger launched an international consulting group, Kissinger Associates, and burnished his reputation as a public intellectual, academic and media commentator. He wrote several books, including tomes on China, diplomacy, strategy and the rise of artificial intelligence.
Kissinger was accused of glossing over the facts in writing his memoirs to enhance his own reputation and role in history. For example, in reflecting on his first visit to China in 1971, he wrote that Taiwan “was only mentioned briefly,” when in fact records released decades later showed that he had offered dramatic concessions over the contentious island in the hope of earning China’s support over Vietnam.
“It’s not unfair to say that he lied” about the meeting, said James Mann, a fellow-in-residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who has written three books on China.
He also “blazed the trail” for former American foreign service officials to make money as consultants, whereas before they had largely disappeared into academic obscurity, Mann said.
“If he had merely served as an extremely powerful and in some ways innovative national security adviser and secretary of state for eight years and then left office without personalizing and commercializing his view of foreign policy, his record would stand and fall on what he did: the merits of an opening with China and détente with the Soviets versus Cambodia, Bangladesh and so on,” Mann added. “But his post-office actions, I think, leave a tremendous stain on his time in office.”
In interviews around his 100th birthday in May, Kissinger said that many world leaders — including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin — would most likely answer his call were he to telephone them unscheduled.
He is survived by his wife, Nancy Maginnes Kissinger, and two children, Elizabeth and David, from his first marriage to Ann Fleischer.
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