Henry Alfred Kissinger (27 May 1923-29 November 2023) was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Felter, Germany. He moved to the United States in 1938. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1943. Graduated from Harvard University, he is a renowned American diplomat, international expert, former U.S. Secretary of State, and recipient of the U.S. Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal.
Kissinger served as National security aide to Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1974, and as Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977.
A proponent of realpolitik, Kissinger played a central role in American foreign policy from 1969 to 1977 and was instrumental in establishing diplomatic relations between the United States and China.
In July 1971, Kissinger secretly visited China from Pakistan, held talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing, and exchanged views on Nixon's visit to China and the normalization of Sino-US relations.
On February 21, 1972, Kissinger accompanied Nixon to China, marking a landmark moment in the normalization of Sino-US relations.
Kissinger once said that after his first visit to China, he set foot on the land more than a hundred times, "each time there is a new harvest." Kissinger has been called "an old friend of the Chinese people."
In January 1973, Kissinger negotiated an end to the Vietnam War in Paris, for which he shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Vietnamese Le Duc Tho.
In 1977, the 38th President of the United States, Gerald Ford, awarded Kissinger the Presidential Medal of Freedom and called him "the greatest secretary of state in American history."
In July 1983, President Reagan appointed him chairman of the Bipartisan Commission on Central American Policy.
Kissinger was awarded the Freedom Medal in 1986.
He was appointed Chairman of the US-India Committee in September 1986.
In March 1987, he was one of the two presidents of the US-China Association.
On May 9, 2016, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger received the U.S. Department of Defense Public Service Medal for Distinguished Service.
On November 25, 2020, the Trump administration removed members of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, including Henry Kissinger.
On November 29, 2023, Kissinger died at the age of 100.
Kissinger is recognized as a master of world order and realistic power balance in international relations. His theory mainly focuses on how to use national diplomatic means to establish political alliance and resist the pressure of the Soviet Union in the international environment of bipolar confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. In other words, the United States was in a disadvantageous situation to combine various forces to contain the strong state of the Soviet Union, so as to achieve the relative balance of the two forces. Kissinger's theory laid the foundation for the final victory of the West in the Cold War, and has been widely used in the diplomatic activities of countries as the theoretical source of foreign relations. This was typified in the foreign policy of US presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
