Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who died Wednesday at age 100, exerted far-reaching influence on global affairs under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977, earning both vilification and the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n
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Here are five things to know about his life in government and beyond:<\/p>\n
For eight restless years \u2014 first as national security adviser, later as secretary of state, and for a time as both \u2014 Kissinger played a dominant role in foreign policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He conducted the first \u2018shuttle diplomacy\u2019 in the quest for Middle East peace. He used secret negotiations to restore ties between the United States and China. He initiated the Paris talks that ultimately provided a face-saving means to get the United States out of war in Vietnam. And he pursued detente with the Soviet Union that led to arms-control agreements.<\/p>\n
Kissinger\u2019s power grew during the turmoil of the Watergate scandal, when the politically attuned diplomat took on a role akin to co-president to the weakened Nixon. \u2018No doubt my vanity was piqued,\u2019 Kissinger later wrote of his expanding influence during Watergate. \u2018But the dominant emotion was a premonition of catastrophe.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kissinger told colleagues at the White House that he was the one person who kept Nixon, \u2018that drunken lunatic,\u2019 from doing things that would \u2018blow up the world,\u2019 according to Walter Isaacson, who wrote the 1992 biography \u2018Kissinger.\u2019<\/p>\n
Pudgy and messy, Kissinger acquired a reputation as a ladies\u2019 man in the staid Nixon administration. Kissinger called women \u2018a diversion, a hobby.\u2019 Isaacson wrote that Hollywood executives were eager to set him up with starlets, whom Kissinger squired to premieres and showy restaurants. His companions included Jill St. John, Shirley MacLaine, Marlo Thomas, Candice Bergen and Liv Ullmann.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a poll of Playboy Club Bunnies in 1972, the man dubbed \u2018Super-K\u2019 by Newsweek finished first as \u2018the man I would most like to go out on a date with.\u2019 Kissinger\u2019s explanation: \u2018Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.\u2019<\/p>\n
Kissinger for decades battled the notion that he and Nixon had settled in 1972 for peace terms in Vietnam that had been available in 1969 and thus had needlessly prolonged the war at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was castigated for authorizing telephone wiretaps of reporters and his own National Security Council staff to plug news leaks in Nixon\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That \u2018incursion,\u2019 as Nixon and Kissinger called it, was blamed by some for contributing to Cambodia\u2019s fall into the hands of Khmer Rouge insurgents.<\/p>\n
Kissinger cultivated the reputation of respected elder statesman, giving speeches, offering advice to Republican and Democratic presidents alike and managing a lucrative global consulting business as he traveled the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But records from the Nixon era, released over the years, brought with them revelations that sometimes cast him in a harsh light. Kissinger was dogged by critics at home and abroad who argued that he should be called to account for his policies on Southeast Asia and support of repressive regimes in Latin America.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He had to think twice before traveling to certain countries to be sure that he would not be summoned by judges seeking to question him about Nixon-era actions.<\/p>\n\n
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who died Wednesday at age 100, exerted far-reaching influence on global affairs under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1977, earning both vilification and the Nobel Peace Prize. Here are five things to know about his life in government and beyond: HIS PORTFOLIO For eight restless <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12284","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}