Henry Kissinger, the master strategist of American diplomacy, has died. He is 100 years old – the world

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger passed away early Thursday morning (Wednesday night in Washington, USA). He is 100 years old.

A charismatic diplomat in the 1970s, he served as US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.Clauded and challenged, he is considered the architect of post-war North American diplomacy and recognized as a skilled negotiator during the height of the Cold War.

Henry Kissinger was an American citizen of German descent who joined the US Army during World War II. He was also Professor of History and Politics at the prestigious Harvard University.

The man who served two US presidents died at his home in Connecticut, USA.

Active diplomatically towards the end of his life, Kissinger made a surprise visit to Beijing in July this year to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Kissinger’s complicated relationship with China is one of the milestones in the career of the most famous American diplomat of all time. America’s rapprochement with China was a topic that was always on Kissinger’s agenda.

Kissinger also handled the difficult negotiations for America’s withdrawal from Vietnam after a very complicated American war.

A cease-fire agreement between Washington’s forces, then North Vietnam, and Hanoi-backed communist guerrillas in South Vietnam would earn him a controversial Nobel Prize.

His support for the 1973 coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile also drew controversy.

In 1975, Henry Kissinger and President Ford approved the invasion of the then Portuguese colony of Timor-Leste by the Indonesian military.

Kissinger and Portugal

US State Department documents made public in 2014 revealed that Kissinger was a supporter of a right-wing coup in Portugal during the 1975 revolution and admitted to supplying weapons to the so-called “Group of Nine”. “.

This belief emerged from a meeting held on August 12, 1975, between Kissinger, Frank Carlucci, the US ambassador in Lisbon, and several members of the State Department, including William Hyland, the agency’s director of information and research.

It was at this meeting at the State Department in Washington that Kissinger and Carlucci discussed the possibility of a civil war in Portugal and the possibility of the United States supplying arms to Mario Soares or the Group of Nine. By the moderate elements of the Armed Forces Movement led by Melo Antunes.

An active life to the end

Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923 in Furth, Germany. “Young Heinz was withdrawn and studious, but passionate about football — so much so that he faced clashes with the Nazis to watch the games,” wrote the New York Times. In the fall of 1938, the Nazi authorities allowed young Heinz’s family to leave Germany, “with the war still a year away”. “With little furniture and a trunk, the Kissingers left for New York aboard the French liner Ile de France. Heinz was 15”, he reveals.

Few figures in American political life have been so influential for so long. Kissinger died, having shown extraordinary clarity to the end by participating in conferences, travels and publishing books, without erasing the controversies surrounding his intense politico-diplomatic career that spanned a century.

“The Cold War was very dangerous,” Henry Kissinger said at a public event at the New York Historical Society in 2016. “Both sides were ready to start a general nuclear war,” he said. But, the ambassador added, “today it is more complicated.” Maybe he’s right.