Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford, passes away at 100
Washington (AP): Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the diplomat with the thick glasses and gravelly voice who dominated foreign policy as the United States extricated itself from Vietnam and broke down barriers with China, died Wednesday, his consulting firm said. He was 100.
With his gruff yet commanding presence and behind-the-scenes manipulation of power, Kissinger exerted uncommon influence on global affairs under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, earning both vilification and the Nobel Peace Prize. Decades later, his name still provoked impassioned debate over foreign policy landmarks long past.
Kissinger's power grew during the turmoil of Watergate, when the politically attuned diplomat assumed a role akin to co-president to the weakened Nixon.
"No doubt my vanity was piqued," Kissinger later wrote of his expanding influence. "But the dominant emotion was a premonition of catastrophe."
A Jew who fled Nazi Germany with his family in his teens, Kissinger in his later years cultivated the reputation of respected statesman, giving speeches, offering advice to Republicans and Democrats alike and managing a global consulting business. He turned up in President Donald Trump's White House on multiple occasions. But Nixon-era documents and tapes, as they trickled out over the years, brought revelations many in Kissinger's own words that sometimes cast him in a harsh light.
Never without his detractors, Kissinger after he left government was dogged by critics who argued that he should be called to account for his policies on Southeast Asia and support of repressive regimes in Latin America.
For eight restless years first as national security adviser, later as secretary of state, and for a time in the middle holding both titles Kissinger ranged across the breadth of major foreign policy issues. He conducted the first "shuttle diplomacy" in the quest for Middle East peace. He used secret channels to pursue ties between the United States and China, ending decades of isolation and mutual hostility.
He initiated the Paris negotiations that ultimately provided a face-saving means a "decent interval," he called it to get the United States out of a costly war in Vietnam. Two years later, Saigon fell to the communists.
And he pursued a policy of detente with the Soviet Union that led to arms control agreements and raised the possibility that the tensions of the Cold War and its nuclear threat did not have to last forever.
At age 99, he was still out on tour for his book on leadership. Asked in July 2022 interview with ABC whether he wished he could take back any of his decisions, Kissinger demurred, saying: "I've been thinking about these problems all my life. It's my hobby as well as my occupation. And so the recommendations I made were the best of which I was then capable."
Even then, he had mixed thoughts on Nixon's record, saying "his foreign policy has held up and he was quite effective in domestic policy" while allowing that the disgraced president had "permitted himself to be involved in a number of steps that were inappropriate for a president."
As Kissinger turned 100 in May 2023, his son David wrote in The Washington Post that his father's centenary "might have an air of inevitability for anyone familiar with his force of character and love of historical symbolism. Not only has he outlived most of his peers, eminent detractors and students, but he has also remained indefatigably active throughout his 90s."
Asked during a CBS interview in the leadup to his 100th birthday about those who view his conduct of foreign policy over the years as a kind of "criminality," Kissinger was nothing but dismissive.
"That's a reflection of their ignorance," Kissinger said. "It wasn't conceived that way. It wasn't conducted that way."
Kissinger continued his involvement in global affairs even in his last months. He met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in July, as bilateral relations were at a low point. And 50 years after his shuttle diplomacy helped end the 1973 Mideast war, when Israel fended off a surprise attack from Egypt and Syria, Kissinger warned of the risks of that conflict repeating itself after Israel faced a surprise assault by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Tributes for Kissinger from prominent U.S. officials poured in immediately upon word of his death. Former President George W. Bush said the U.S. "lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs" and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Kissinger was "endlessly generous with the wisdom gained over the course of an extraordinary life."
Kissinger's consulting firm said he died at his home in Connecticut.
Kissinger was a practitioner of realpolitik using diplomacy to achieve practical objectives rather than advance lofty ideals. Supporters said his pragmatic bent served U.S. interests; critics saw a Machiavellian approach that ran counter to democratic ideals.
He was castigated for authorizing telephone wiretaps of reporters and his own National Security Council staff to plug news leaks in Nixon's White House. He was denounced on college campuses for the bombing and allied invasion of Cambodia in April 1970, intended to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines to communist forces in South Vietnam.
That "incursion," as Nixon and Kissinger called it, was blamed by some for contributing to Cambodia's fall into the hands of Khmer Rouge insurgents who later slaughtered some 2 million Cambodians.
Kissinger, for his part, made it his mission to debunk what he referred to in 2007 as a "prevalent myth" that he and Nixon had settled in 1972 for peace terms that had been available in 1969 and thus had needlessly prolonged the Vietnam War at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives.
He insisted that the only way to speed up the withdrawal would have been to agree to Hanoi's demands that the U.S. overthrow the South Vietnamese government and replace it with communist-dominated leadership.
Pudgy and messy, Kissinger incongruously acquired a reputation as a ladies' man in the staid Nixon administration. Kissinger, who had divorced his first wife in 1964, called women "a diversion, a hobby." Jill St. John was a frequent companion. But it turned out his real love interest was Nancy Maginnes, a researcher for Nelson Rockefeller whom he married in 1974.
In a 1972 poll of Playboy Club Bunnies, the man dubbed "Super-K" by Newsweek finished first as "the man I would most like to go out on a date with."
Kissinger's explanation: "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."
Yet Kissinger was reviled by many Americans for his conduct of wartime diplomacy. He was still a lightning rod decades later: In 2015, an appearance by the 91-year-old Kissinger before the Senate Armed Services Committee was disrupted by protesters demanding his arrest for war crimes and calling out his actions in Southeast Asia, Chile and beyond.
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in the Bavarian city of Fuerth on May 27, 1923, the son of a schoolteacher. His family left Nazi Germany in 1938 and settled in Manhattan, where Heinz changed his name to Henry.
Kissinger had two children, Elizabeth and David, from his first marriage.
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She is gone, the music lives on: Sorrow and song as Asha Bhosle cremated with state honours
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Mumbai (PTI): "Abhi Na Jaao Chhodkar..." The strains of that wistful song played in the background at the Shivaji Park crematorium on Monday as hundreds of people gathered inside, and outside, to bid music legend Asha Bhosle a final sayonara.
A gun salute rang out as the last rites of Bhosle, perhaps the last of the singing greats who ruled the soundwaves for decades and still do, were held in accordance with Hindu rituals and with full state honours. Her son Anand performed the rituals.
Bhosle, one half of the legendary Mangeshkar sisters, passed away on Sunday due to multi-organ failure. She was 92 as was her Lata didi when she died in February 2022.
Priests recited mantras around the funeral pyre, decorated with vibrant yellow and orange marigolds.
Granddaughter Zanai was inconsolable. Sister Usha Mangeshkar, also a singer, and brother Hridaynath Mangeshkar, a music composer, were there too.
Among those gathered to pay their last respects to India's singer nonpareil were Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Sunetra Pawar, director Ramesh Sippy and actors Aamir Khan and Vicky Kaushal.
It was a moment of sorrow and song too.
Before the pyre was lit, singers Shaan, Sudesh Bhosle and Anup Jalota paid a musical tribute to the enduring legend who sang some 12,000 songs in an incredible eight-decade career that started when she was just 10.
While Sudesh Bhosle crooned "Zindagi Ek Safar Hai Suhana", Shaan sang "Pyaar Ke Mod Pe".
But they were not the only ones.
Many fans, their hands folded in prayer, were heard singing the many numbers that made Bhosle the star that she was for music lovers of all ages and through many generations.
Snatches of "Aaiye Meherbaan", the languid song of love filmed on Madhubala, and "Chura Liya Hai Tumne Jo Dil Pe", romance of another hue pictured on Zeenat Aman many decades later, and many others, could be heard. Some softly crooned, others louder.
"I've been a huge fan of Asha Tai. She has had songs for every mood and occasion. Our Tai, and her songs, will live forever in our hearts," said one ardent fan.
The irrepressible, exuberance of the versatile Bhosle, who was compelling whether she was singing classical or cabaret, was inspirational, said another.
"Not just her songs, but her being so energetic at this age inspired me. It's all because of her that I'm quite active even now," added another who came with her daughter.
The fanspeak melded with the instrumental versions of many of Bhosle's songs, right from "Inhi Logon Ne" to "In Aankhon Ki Masti" that played out.
It was a day to remember for Mumbai.
People lined the streets, gathered on rooftops and windows, and hundreds walked along the cortege as it made its slow way from Bhosle's home Lower Parel to Shivaji Park to accompany the city's very own Asha Tai on her last journey.
Chants of "Asha Tai amar rahe" went up in the crowds gathered for a last glimpse of the singing star who ruled playlists -- and hearts -- for eight decades.
A giant photograph of Bhosle, radiant in a red sari with her trademark bindi and an ornate nose ring, was placed on the flower-decked bier as the procession made its way through the streets.
Earlier in the day, Bhosle's body, in a glass casket and draped in the tricolour, was kept at her home for mourners to pay their last respects.
Her songs across the decades -- "Aao Huzoor Tumko", "Aaiye Meherban", "Jhumka Gira Re", "Dil Cheez Kya Hai", "O Saathi Re" and "Yai Re Yai Re" -- played softly in the background.
A reminder as it were that the singer may be gone but her songs will live on forever.
Veteran actors Asha Parekh and Helen, Ranveer Singh, Tabu, composer AR Rahman, cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and political leaders Uddhav Thackeray, Praful Patel and Supriya Sule were among those who gathered at her residence.
Bhosle was a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, Dadasaheb Phalke Award and the Maharashtra Bhushan.
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