Henry Kissinger, America's most controversial and equally influential diplomat, dies at 100

Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state and one of the most controversial Americans of the twentieth century, has died at the age of 100 in Connecticut. Kissinger's death was reported by Kissinger Associates, Inc in a statement. Kissinger's legacy remains intertwined with the death toll of several million during America's humiliating defeat in the Vietnam War and his ability to establish Washington-Beijing ties through an astute blend of people-to-people ties and covert interactions of unprecedented natures in the early 1970s.

Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut, Kissinger Associates said. He was awarded Nobel Peace Prize "for jointly having negotiated a cease-fire in Vietnam in 1973".

Kissinger was active during his last months and attended meetings in the White House, where he was revered even in unofficial capacities. In July 2023, he made a surprise visit to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, a diplomatic opening he helped open up nearly five decades ago, in one of the most significant geopolitical events of the twentieth century. 

The scholar-turned-diplomat advised a dozen US Presidents, from John F. Kennedy to the current President Joe Biden. A German-Jewish refugee in the United States, Kissinger is celebrated, reviled, and denounced in different parts of the world. 

Kissinger often trampled upon the purported American values, Washington officially advocated during and even after the Cold War, to meet American interests. 

Kissinger deployed ambition and intellect to remake the American relationship with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. His ability to put the notion that 'America has no permanent friends or enemies' into the geopolitical vogue of the twentieth century continues to mark Washington's present-day worldview. 

He is hailed as an ultra-realist who, for better or worse, transformed every diplomatic equation he touched. Between Kennedy and Biden, and from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, Kissinger's role remained indispensable to Washington's corridors of power, in every war waged by the US.