Kissinger, Henry Alfred
[key], 1923–2023, American political scientist and U.S. secretary
of state (1973–77), b. Germany. He emigrated to the United States in
1938. A leading expert on international relations and nuclear defense
policy, Kissinger taught (1957–69) at Harvard and served as a
consultant to government agencies and private foundations. As President
Nixon's assistant
for national security affairs (1969–73) and then secretary of state,
he played a major role in formulating U.S. foreign policy. Kissinger helped
initiate (1969) the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the Soviet
Union and arranged President Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of
China. He supported U.S. disengagement from Vietnam and won (1973) the Nobel
Peace Prize for negotiating the cease-fire with North Vietnam. He also
negotiated a cease-fire between Israel and Egypt and the disengagement of
their troops after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Kissinger continued in office
after Gerald R. Ford succeeded
(1974) to the presidency. Since 1977 he has lectured and served as a
consultant on international affairs. His writings include Nuclear
Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957), The Necessity for
Choice (1961), The Troubled Partnership
(1965), Diplomacy (1994), Does America Need a
Foreign Policy? (2001), Ending the Vietnam War
(2003), Crisis (2003), On China (2011),
and World Order (2014).
See his memoirs, The White House Years (1979), Years of Upheaval (1982), and Years of Renewal (1999)(1979, 1982, 1999); biographies by S. R. Graubard (1973), W. Isaacson (1992), and N. Ferguson (Vol. I, 2015); studies by B. and M. Kalb (1974), D. Caldwell, ed. (1983), S. Hersh (1983), R. D. Schulzinger (1989), G. A. Andrianopoulos (1991), L. Berman (2001), C. Hitchins (2001), J. Hanhimaki (2004), R. Dallek (2007), M. Del Pero (2009), G. Grandin (2015), J. K. Sebenius et al. (2018), and B. Gewen (2020).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.S. History: Biographies
