A number of world leaders have paid homage to Henry Kissinger following his death at a ripe age. Streams of tributes poured in on Thursday, November 30, 2023 to acknowledge the diplomat.
The Nobel Prize-winning academic and American diplomat, died at the age of 100 on Wednesday, November 29, 2023, at his home in Connecticut.
His family fled Nazi Germany and came to America in 1938.
In 1969, U.S President Richard Nixon appointed him National Security Advisor.
He subsequently served as Secretary of State under U.S Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Kissinger’s work on the diplomatic opening of China to the U.S and landmark US-Soviet arms deals earned him respect.
However, his role in the Vietnam War, his polarising policies in the United States’s bombing of Cambodia from 1969, and his support for anti-communist dictatorships, particularly in Latin America, made him a divisive figure.
“America has lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices” on foreign affairs, said former U.S President, George W Bush.
“I have long admired the man who fled the Nazis as a young boy from a Jewish family, then fought them in the United States army. When he later became secretary of state, his appointment as a former refugee said as much about his greatness as it did America’s greatness.”
George Bush
One of Kissinger’s arguably signature diplomatic accomplishments was laying the groundwork for the historic 1979 peace deal between Egypt and Israel, under Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin respectively.
It was after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 that Kissinger popularised his “shuttle diplomacy”, acting as a jet-setting mediator to help advance incremental peace talks among the two bitter enemies.
Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, said on Thursday that Kissinger “laid the cornerstone of the peace agreement, which [was] later signed with Egypt, and so many other processes around the world I admire.”
French President, Emmanuel Macron, posted, “Henry Kissinger was a giant of history. His century of ideas and of diplomacy had a lasting influence on his time and on our world.”
Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, also described Kissinger as a stalwart of strategic politics and world diplomacy.
“It has been a privilege to have recently engaged with him on various issues on the international agenda. His passing saddens us, and I express my personal condolences, as well as those of the Italian government, to his family and loved ones.”
Giorgia Meloni
German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz noted on X that Kissinger’s commitment “to the transatlantic friendship between the USA and Germany was significant, and he always remained close to his German homeland.”
In a message of condolences to Kissinger’s family, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote that “with his détente and disarmament policy, Henry Kissinger laid the foundation for the end of the Cold War and the democratic transition in eastern Europe” which led to Germany’s reunification.
Chinese foreign ministry Spokesperson, Wang Wenbin called Kissinger an “old friend and good friend of the Chinese people, and a pioneer and builder of China-US relations.”
“[Kissinger] had long been concerned about and supported the development of China-US relations, visiting China more than a hundred times and making historic contributions to promote the normalisation of China-US relations.”
Wang Wenbin
Russian President, Vladimir Putin said in a message to Kissinger’s wife that he was “a wise and far-sighted statesman.”
“Controversial Legacy”
Instead of tributes, a number of people expressed criticism of Kissinger.
A Rolling Stone magazine headline said: “Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America’s ruling class, finally dies.”
“Henry Kissinger’s bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians — and set [a] path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge,” Sophal Ear, a scholar at Arizona State University who studies Cambodia’s political economy, noted.
The head of the independent Documentation Center of Cambodia, Youk Chhang, described Kissinger’s legacy as “controversial.”
Much more than half of the population had been born after the Khmer Rouge had been ousted in 1979 and Kissinger had left government, so there was not much awareness among Cambodians about his record, he said.
Critics also recalled the key role Kissinger had played in helping usher in 17 years of military dictatorship in Chile after the US-backed coup against Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973 brought Gen Augusto Pinochet to power.
“Another criminal who dies in total impunity,” Daniel Jadue, a prominent leftwing politician in Chile posted on X.
Jadue also called Kissinger “an instigator and accomplice of slaughters in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
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