Closing summary
Awestruck tributes and blistering takedowns: the world’s most famous diplomat drew them all out, as indeed he was able to do his entire life, commanding an audience of world leaders and the fury of civil society groups in dozens of countries who saw him as a war criminal.
If anything, when trying to read the legacy of this controversial herald of the world’s greatest democracy, perhaps it’s the gushing tributes from autocratic leaders such as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin that speak loudest.
How the reaction played out:
Political leaders in western Europe took a careful tone, of respect for a consequential figure. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, posted: “Henry Kissinger was a giant of history. His century of ideas and of diplomacy had a lasting influence on his time and on our world.”
Widely reviled in Latin America his support of brutal rightwing dictatorships during the late 1960s and 70s, Kissinger was described by Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s ambassador to the United States, as: “A man whose historical brilliance could never conceal his profound moral wretchedness.”
China paid tribute to an ‘old friend’, as Kissinger was often described in the country. It was after a secret trip to China in 1971 to meet with the then-premier, Zhou Enlai that he started to cede rhetorical ground on the Taiwan issue, eventually leading to the US severing ties with Taiwan and formally recognising the government in Beijing instead.
In Taiwan, by contrast, some people there praised his death as “good news”. “Bless him for being Chinese in his next life,” one online commenter said.
Vladimir Putin hailed a ‘wise statesman’. In a message to Kissinger’s wife, the Russian leader said Kissinger’s name “is inextricably linked with a pragmatic foreign policy line, which at one time made it possible to achieve detente in international tensions and reach the most important Soviet-American agreements that contributed to the strengthening of global security”.
A (supportive? damning?) word from the former UK prime minister Tony Blair, whose invasion of Iraq was supported by Kissinger. Blair said Kissinger left him “in awe”:
Of course, like anyone who has confronted the most difficult problems of international politics, he was criticized at times, even denounced. But I believe he was always motivated not from a coarse ‘realpolitik’, but from a genuine love of the free world and the need to protect it. He was a problem solver, whether in respect of the cold war, the Middle East or China and its rise.”
But the last word, for now, to Rolling Stone’s headline – less for journalistic rigour than for pure heat:
Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies”
Thank you for reading. Chris Michael, US editor (GMT)
Updated
I’ll say it again – Kissinger was the real-life Forrest Gump, present at so many key historical moments in the 20th century that he sometimes seemed like a svengali of world leaders.
Look back at 10 decades of life on the international stage – as captured by photographers:
Updated
'Sordid': a renewed look at Kissinger's interventions in Africa
The men who sat down for dinner at the Hotel Bodenmais in West Germany on 23 June 1976 were exclusively white, although the issue to be discussed was the path to majority black rule in Rhodesia, writes Peter Beaumont.
At the table was John Vorster, prime minister of apartheid South Africa. With him were ambassadors, diplomats and security officials. Pride of place, however, was reserved for the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who opened the proceedings with a racially tinged joke.
It was a dinner that took place in the midst of a frantic two-year period when the world’s most high-profile diplomat – who had dismissively ignored Africa for much of his time in office in the Nixon and Ford administrations – was taken with a sudden interest in the continent.
Then, armed with a dangerous cold war logic, he applied himself to successive crises in Ethiopia, Angola and Rhodesia in the search of a quick fix to burnish a reputation that was beginning to be eclipsed. Now, his interventions in Africa are once again under the spotlight, not only for their multiple failures but for their long-lasting and dangerous consequences – in southern Africa in particular.
Read the full story:
Updated
Peru, Pelé and Grimsby: Henry Kissinger and his curious football links
Kissinger loved football and often attended games, writes Jonathan Wilson.
As a boy growing up in Bavaria, he had been a fan of his home-town club SpVgg Fürth, who were three times a German champion between 1916 and 1929. When he became security adviser to Richard Nixon in 1969, staff would include reports on the team’s games among his briefing papers on a Monday morning.
He played football as well, first as a goalkeeper and then, after breaking a bone in a hand, as an inside-forward. He devised new tactics which, in the account he gave to Brian Kilmeade in The Games Do Count, he claims were a forerunner of catenaccio, although it sounds more like just massing players behind the ball. “The system was to drive the other team nuts by not letting them score, by keeping so many people back as defenders,” he said. “It’s very hard to score when 10 players are lined up in front of goal.” That the ends were more important to him than the means comes as little surprise.
Read the full story:
Updated
On the subject of Taiwan – and see below for our China correspondent Amy Hawkins’ reminder of the incredible fact that in 1979 Kissinger was a key figure in the US severing ties with Taiwan, and switching its formal recognition to the government in Beijing – some people there praised his death as “good news”.
“Bless him for being Chinese in his next life,” one said.
Foreign ministry officials in Taipei, however, described Kissinger as a “towering figure in the history of American diplomacy”.
The opposition Kuomintang party, which ruled the island as a Chinese government-in-exile at the time of the US switch, also offered its condolences to his family.
“We recognise Kissinger’s efforts to bring about peace and prosperity in the Indo Pacific throughout his career in and outside government,” it said in a tweet.
The message prompted incredulity and scorn from some users.
“He takes away your UNSC seat and you mourn his death. That’s … a choice,” said one.
Kissinger: a video obituary
The real-life Forrest Gump, Kissinger sometimes seemed to be involved in every major historical geopolitical event of the 1960s and 70s, and indeed his shadow stretched all the way to the presidency of Joe Biden.
Watch some of the highlights:
Updated
China’s president, Xi Jinping, expressed his condolences for the death of Kissinger, who was often described by Beijing as a “dear old friend” of China.
The foreign ministry said that China and the US should carry forward Kissinger’s “strategic vision and political courage”.
Kissinger made a secret trip to China in 1971 to meet with the then-premier, Zhou Enlai. It was on that visit that Kissinger started to cede rhetorical ground on the Taiwan issue, which was a major point of contention in establishing a rapprochement between Washington and Beijing.
At the time of Kissinger’s visit to China, the US still recognised the Republic of China, based in Taipei, as the sole government of China. Kissinger’s visit laid the groundwork for President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing the following year, where he met Mao Zedong, China’s leader and the head of the Chinese Communist party. On Nixon’s visit, the two leaders signed the Shanghai Communique, in which both countries pledged to work towards the normalisation of diplomatic relations.
The US severed ties with Taiwan and formally recognised the government in Beijing in 1979, one of Kissinger’s most consequential legacies for China-Taiwan relations.
Updated
'Moral wretchedness': Latin America remembers his troubled legacy
In Latin America, where Kissinger is widely reviled for his support of brutal rightwing dictatorships during the late 1960s and 70s, the former US secretary of state was remembered in far harsher terms.
Critics recalled the key role Kissinger had played in helping usher in 17 years of military dictatorship in Chile after the US-backed coup against Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973 brought Gen Augusto Pinochet to power.
Kissinger later told Pinochet he had done “a great service to the west” by removing Chile’s democratically elected socialist president from power. “In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here,” Kissinger said.
Reacting to the news of Kissinger’s death, Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s ambassador to the United States, tweeted: “A man whose historical brilliance could never conceal his profound moral wretchedness.”
“Another criminal who dies in total impunity,” tweeted Daniel Jadue, a prominent leftwing politician in Chile, calling Kissinger “an instigator and accomplice of slaughters in Asia, Africa and Latin America”.
Detractors also accused Kissinger of supporting Operation Condor, a vicious state campaign of torture, terror and assassination targeting opponents of the rightwing dictatorships that had seized control in South America during the 1960s, 70s and 80s in countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru.
“Plan Condor and the war against the people of Vietnam are just two examples of Kissinger’s legacy,” Bolivia’s former ambassador to the UN, Sacha Llorenti, wrote on X.
In Brazil, whose 1964-85 dictatorship Kissinger also supported, critics remembered how the US diplomat had been forced to cancel a 1981 appearance at a university in the capital Brasília by student activists who accused him of murder.
Updated
French and Italian leaders pay tribute to 'giant of history'
Reaction from political leaders in western Europe was less negative, if not entirely gushing; the tone was one of respect for a consequential figure and a careful effort to avoid saying anything about his more controversial policies.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, posted: “Henry Kissinger was a giant of history. His century of ideas and of diplomacy had a lasting influence on his time and on our world.”
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, described Henry Kissinger as a stalwart of strategic politics and world diplomacy, stating: “It has been a privilege to have recently engaged with him on various issues on the international agenda. His passing saddens us, and I express my personal condolences, as well as those of the Italian government, to his family and loved ones.”
One former leader did more directly address Kissinger’s moral legacy – the former British prime minister Tony Blair, whose invasion of Iraq in tandem with the US under George W Bush was supported by Kissinger. Blair said Kissinger left him “in awe”:
Of course, like anyone who has confronted the most difficult problems of international politics, he was criticized at times, even denounced. But I believe he was always motivated not from a coarse ‘realpolitik’, but from a genuine love of the free world and the need to protect it. He was a problem solver, whether in respect of the cold war, the Middle East or China and its rise.”
Updated
Kissinger criticized over controversial legacy
Criticism of Kissinger has flowed in equal measure. A Rolling Stone magazine headline said: “Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America’s ruling class, finally dies.”
“Henry Kissinger’s bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians — and set [a] path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge,” Sophal Ear, a scholar at Arizona State University who studies Cambodia’s political economy, wrote on the Conversation.
“The cluster bombs dropped on Cambodia under Kissinger’s watch continue to destroy the lives of any man, woman or child who happens across them.”
The head of the independent Documentation Center of Cambodia, Youk Chhang, described Kissinger’s legacy as “controversial”.
Much more than half of the population had been born after the Khmer Rouge had been ousted in 1979 and Kissinger had left government, so there was not much awareness among Cambodians about his record, he said.
Updated
One of Kissinger’s arguably signature diplomatic accomplishments was laying the groundwork for the historic 1979 peace deal between Egypt and Israel, under Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin respectively.
It was after the Yom Kippur War in 1973 that Kissinger popularised his “shuttle diplomacy”, acting as a jet-setting mediator to help advance incremental peace talks among the two bitter enemies. This process eventually led to the 12 days of secret talks at Camp David, the country retreat of the US president – Jimmy Carter at the time – though Kissinger was no longer in office by then to see the culmination of his efforts.
This morning in Tel Aviv, while meeting the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, said Kissinger “laid the cornerstone of the peace agreement, which [was] later signed with Egypt, and so many other processes around the world I admire.”
Blinken added that Kissinger “really set the standard for everyone who followed in this job” and that he was “very privileged to get his counsel many times, including as recently as about a month ago”.
“Few people were better students of history,” he said. “Even fewer people did more to shape history than Henry Kissinger.”
Updated
Not everyone has been nearly so effusive. On social media, some reaction to Kissinger’s passing on social media has tended more towards joyous celebration. Kissinger has often been described as a war criminal for his (frequently illegal) bombing campaigns and his history of overthrowing democratically elected governments in other countries, all the in the name of serving American interests.
In New York City last night at the corner of 5th Avenue and 53rd Street, at least some of the protesters gathered to protest against the Israel-Hamas war reacted with jubilation when an organiser announced Kissinger’s death, after declaring that the largest transfer of military assistance to Israel happened under his watch.
Protestors cheer upon learning Henry Kissinger died pic.twitter.com/lTkBuAJO0P
— katie smith (@probablyreadit) November 30, 2023
Updated
German chancellor says Kissinger 'remained close to his German homeland'
As well as Putin, China and the US, leaders of Kissinger’s native Germany paid tribute. A Jew who fled Nazi rule with his family in his teens, Kissinger’s distinctive Bavarian accent made his pronouncements unmistakeable.
“His commitment to the transatlantic friendship between the USA and Germany was significant, and he always remained close to his German homeland,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X.
In a message of condolences to Kissinger’s family, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote that “with his détente and disarmament policy, Henry Kissinger laid the foundation for the end of the Cold War and the democratic transition in eastern Europe” which led to Germany’s reunification.
Updated
China pays tribute to 'old friend' as Putin hails 'wise statesman'
The death of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the celebrity diplomat who popularised the concepts of realpolitik and shuttle diplomacy, has triggered a torrent of tributes and criticism alike for a record that is as outsized as the anger he still inspires.
The death at 100 of a diplomatic giant, who told the BBC that at the age of 10 years old he remembered hearing the news that Adolf Hitler had been elected and who went on to advise 12 presidents from John F Kennedy to Joe Biden, ended decades of influence long after his official service to US presidents Nixon and Ford through his unique geopolitical consulting firm, Kissinger Associates.
His complicated legacy was reflected by the range of glowing praise that spilled out after his death – not just from former US presidents, but from China and Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Praised for negotiating the US reopening to what was then a closed China, and securing the US exit from the punishing war in Vietnam – for which he jointly won the Nobel peace prize – Kissinger has also been called a war criminal. He supported Indonesia’s military dictator in the invasion of East Timor and backed the invasion of Angola by the apartheid regime in South Africa. Perhaps most notoriously, he worked with the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in a coup that installed the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet.
“America has lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices” on foreign affairs, said former US president George W Bush. “I have long admired the man who fled the Nazis as a young boy from a Jewish family, then fought them in the United States army. When he later became secretary of state, his appointment as a former refugee said as much about his greatness as it did America’s greatness.”
In China, foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin called Kissinger an “old friend and good friend of the Chinese people, and a pioneer and builder of China-US relations”.
Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, said in a message to Kissinger’s wife that he was “a wise and far-sighted statesman” and his name “is inextricably linked with a pragmatic foreign policy line, which at one time made it possible to achieve detente in international tensions and reach the most important Soviet-American agreements that contributed to the strengthening of global security”.
Good morning, I’m Chris Michael in London. We’ll bring you the latest reactions to Kissinger’s death as we get them.
Updated
