Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, dies at the age of 100

Protagonist of world politics and diplomacy, advisor to 12 presidents

Editorial board

US politics has lost its tutelary deity, diplomatic and strategic purpose. At 100 years old he died Henry Kissinger. The advisor to 12 Presidents, from John Kennedy to Joe Biden himself, passed away on the evening of November 29th in his home in Connecticut.

Henry Kissinger dies

Born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Furth in Bavaria in 1923, became Henry upon his arrival in the United States in 1938 fleeing anti-Semitic Nazi persecution. His diplomatic art and political ability were a distinctive feature of his entire life. Until the last few days he was politically active, among his last commitments there was the meeting with Prime Minister Meloni in Washington last July. Despite being among the protagonists of the Yom Kippur War and Israel’s victory in 1973, he has not made his voice heard about what is happening in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas.

influential diplomat

We remember his famous phrase “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”. It was influential globally and his work contributed to consolidating the USA as a world power, even excluding interventions judged brutal and illegitimate such as the intervention in Cambodia or the I support Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973. He was a close friend of Gianni Agnelli, he always looked carefully at Italy, the country at the heart of the Atlantic Pact but with the strongest Communist Party in the West. To the Washington Post, as reported by Ansa, on the occasion of his hundredth birthday, his son David said that among the secrets of his longevity, there was an inexhaustible curiosity towards the challenges of every moment. Despite a diet based on bratwurst and Wiener schinitzel. Suffice it to say that two years ago he wrote a book on Artificial Intelligence, one of the threats but also opportunities of contemporary times. Regarding the war in Ukraine, he initially thought it was possible to work on a solution based on a neutral Ukraine and then change course and support its entry into NATO.

The carreer

Henry Kissinger he said he was shy. A German immigrant, he learned English perfectly without ever losing his German accent. After his studies Harvardthanks to the influence of Nelson Rockefeller, worked for the president Richard Nixon and then Gerald Ford, after Watergate. All the negotiations passed through his hands, it was he who worked on the first détente with the former USSR and the thaw with China with Nixon’s trip to Beijing, up to the Paris agreements for the ceasefire in Vietnam. Event that made him conquer the Nobel Peace Prize, a highly contested recognition. Not having been born in the USA he could not aspire to the White House and for this reason he was always a sort of “shadow president”.



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