Kissinger, Henry
(b. May 27, 1923) Secretary of state during the Nixon and Ford administrations, national security adviser during the Nixon administration, and architect of U.S. foreign policy.
As a Harvard University government professor, national security adviser to President Richard Nixon, and as secretary of state for both Nixon and President Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger was an influential architect of U.S. policy during the Cold War (1946–1991). Born in Fürth, Germany, Kissinger immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Kissinger enrolled in Harvard University in 1947. For the next twenty-five years, Harvard would be the base of his influence over U.S. foreign policy.
The ideas that formed the core of Kissinger's thinking on international relations took shape in his doctoral dissertation on Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Congress of Vienna, written for Harvard's Government Department and published in 1957 as A World Restored. Though his topic seemed far removed from the Cold War, Kissinger saw a direct connection. In it he argued that the European nations of the early nineteenth century, though faced with a revolutionary and expansionist government in Napoleon's France, were able to establish a generation of stability and peace through a careful balancing of national interests. This work articulated Kissinger's belief in the realistic tradition of U.S. foreign policy that places primary emphasis on the pursuit of national interest rather than morality and idealism in international affairs.
Kissinger's second book, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, criticized the massive retaliation policies then used by the Eisenhower administration to contain Communism. This strategy, Kissinger argued, limited too severely the response the United States might make to international problems. Instead, the nation had to develop the capability to respond to a wide range of threats to its national security, including "limited nuclear war." Kissinger's book, together with his work for the Council on Foreign Relations, brought him to the attention of national politicians, especially New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. In Richard Nixon's administration (1969–1973), Kissinger wielded his greatest influence over U.S. foreign policy.
As national security adviser during Richard Nixon's first term as president, Kissinger was, next to the president, the administration's most influential foreign policy maker. Nixon and Kissinger together worked out the intellectual design for détente with the Soviet Union and China. Both American leaders recognized that the widening division between the two Communist super-powers by 1969 created bold new opportunities for U.S. foreign policy. Their policy of détente assumed that by improving relations with the USSR and China, the United States could establish a triangular relationship that would reduce tensions in the Cold War. Through secret negotiations in Moscow and Beijing, Kissinger laid the foundation for the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), which Nixon signed with the Soviets in 1972, and for the president's surprise visit to China in 1972. In both cases Kissinger received wide acclaim for making important contributions to the first significant "thaw" in the history of the Cold War.
During his White House years Kissinger also proved to be an adept negotiator in two other important venues. In an effort to end the U.S. war in Vietnam honorably, Nixon dispatched Kissinger to Paris in August 1969 to begin what would be three years of secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese. By October 1972 Kissinger and his North Vietnamese counterpart, Le Duc Tho, had hammered out the basis for a cease-fire and the return of U.S. prisoners of war, an agreement that was finally signed in January 1973. For their role in ending the long U.S. war, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. Later that year, following the October Arab-Israeli conflict, Kissinger's negotiating skills would be applied again, this time in an attempt to broker a Middle East peace settlement. Engaging in "shuttle diplomacy" that had him traveling back and forth repeatedly between Cairo and Jerusalem, Kissinger ultimately failed to achieve a comprehensive accord but did manage to persuade Israel to pull its troops out of Arab territory.
Kissinger became secretary of state in 1973, a post he continued to hold when Gerald Ford became president in August 1974. During the Ford years Kissinger continued to work on behalf of détente. He played a key role in negotiating a second SALT accord with the Soviets in 1974, only to see the U.S. Senate refuse to ratify that treaty. In 1975 Kissinger and Ford negotiated the Helsinki Agreement with the Soviet Union, in which the Cold War adversaries agreed for the first time to recognize the national boundaries in Europe established after World War II. After leaving office, Kissinger continued to influence U.S. foreign policy as a private consultant.
Containment and Détente; Nixon, Richard M.; War Powers Act.
Bibliography
Hersh, Seymour. The Price of Power: Henry Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit Books, 1983.
Isaacson, Walter. Kissinger: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Kissinger, Henry. White House Years. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979.
Kissinger, Henry. Years of Upheaval. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982.
Morris, Roger. Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. New York: HarperCollins, 1977.
Schulzinger, Robert D. Henry Kissinger: Doctor of Diplomacy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
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