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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Committed to Constitution, no provision for creamy layers in SC/ST quota: Union Cabinet
New Delhi, Aug 9: The Union Cabinet on Friday asserted that there was no provision for a creamy layer in the reservation for SCs and STs in the Constitution given by B R Ambedkar.
The Union Cabinet, at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held a detailed discussion on the Supreme Court judgement on the sub-categorisation of reservation for SCs and STs as granted in the Constitution.
"It is the well thought view of the Union Cabinet that the NDA government is firmly committed to the provisions in the Constitution given by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar," Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters here.
He said there was a detailed discussion in the Union Cabinet meeting on a recent Supreme Court judgement that made certain suggestions on the reservation for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST).
"According to the Constitution given by B R Ambedkar, there is no provision for a creamy layer in the SC-ST reservation," Vaishnaw said.
He asserted that the provision for SC-ST reservation should be in accordance with the Constitution.
Asked whether the issue was raised by the minister for social justice and empowerment or the prime minister, Vaishnaw said it is the well-thought-out view of the Cabinet.
"I have told you about the discussion that took place in the cabinet meeting," Vaishnaw said to questions on whether any legislative changes were being planned on the issue.
Earlier on Friday, a delegation of SC and ST MPs met Prime Minister Modi and discussed the issue of SC/ST reservation and the Supreme Court judgement.
After the meeting, Modi said on X, "Met a delegation of SC/ST MPs today. Reiterated our commitment and resolve for the welfare and empowerment of the SC/ST communities."
Earlier this month, a seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud ruled in a 6:1 majority judgment that state governments were permitted to sub-classify communities within the SC list based on empirical data.
Supreme Court judge Justice B R Gavai had said that States must evolve a policy for identifying the creamy layer even among the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Schedule Tribes (ST) and deny them the benefit of reservation.
Justice Gavai penned a separate but concurring judgement in which the top court by a majority verdict said the states are empowered to make sub-classifications of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for granting quotas within the reserved category to uplift those who belong to the more underprivileged castes.
BJP Rajya Sabha member Sikander Kumar, who was part of the delegation that met the prime minister, told PTI," All of us were concerned over the Supreme Court's observation. We were getting phone calls from people expressing concern over the matter."
"A delegation of MPs representing SCs and STs met the prime minister this morning and expressed their concern in this connection," he said in the Parliament complex.
The prime minister held a serious discussion with the MPs and assured that the government will not let the apex court's observation be implemented, Kumar said. "We express our gratitude towards the prime minister for this," he said.
BJP MP Faggan Singh Kulaste said the delegation in its memorandum to the prime minister urged that the apex court's observation on the issue of creamy layer should not be implemented.
"The prime minister was also held a similar view. He assured us that he will look into the matter and asked us not to worry, saying it will not be implemented in the SC and ST category," he told PTI.
