Henry Kissinger, a diplomatic dynamo whose duties as national security advisor and secretary of state under two presidents left a lasting effect on US foreign policy and earned him a contentious Nobel Peace Prize, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 100.
Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut, according to Kissinger Associates Inc., his geopolitical consulting business. The circumstances were not mentioned.
It is said that he will be interred in a private family burial, followed by a public memorial service in New York City at a later date.
Kissinger had continued to stay active after his centennial, attending White House meetings, writing a book on leadership styles, and testifying before a Senate committee on North Korea's nuclear danger. He paid a surprise visit to Beijing in July 2023 to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.
While serving as national security adviser and secretary of state under Republican President Richard Nixon throughout the 1970s, he was involved in many of the decade's defining global events.
With Nixon's resignation in 1974 over the Watergate scandal, Kissinger's reign as the primary architect of US foreign policy came to an end. Nonetheless, he remained a diplomatic force as Secretary of State under Nixon's successor, President Gerald Ford, and expressed strong ideas for the remainder of his life.
While many praised Kissinger's intelligence and breadth of experience, others labeled him a war criminal for his backing of anti-communist dictatorships, particularly in Latin America. His travels were hampered in his later years by attempts by other countries to arrest or question him on former US foreign policy.
Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923, in Furth, Germany, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1938, before the Nazi drive to eliminate European Jewry.
Kissinger became a naturalized US citizen in 1943, fought in the Army in Europe during WWII, and attended Harvard University on a scholarship, obtaining a master's degree in 1952 and a PhD in 1954. He remained on the Harvard faculty for the following 17 years.