The architect of détente who used 'linkage' to build the first framework for superpower arms control, the face of American realism
In his notorious 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci, he declared: 'Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse. This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely.' The comment infuriated Nixon.
A Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany at fifteen, Kissinger rose through Harvard's academic ranks to become the most consequential American foreign-policy maker of the Cold War. As National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, he pioneered détente with the Soviet Union, devising the 'linkage' strategy that tied arms control and trade to Soviet restraint and conducting the secret backchannel with Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that broke the deadlock over SALT I and the ABM Treaty at the 1972 Moscow Summit. He opened relations with Mao's China through clandestine diplomacy, mediated the Paris Peace Accords to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but also presided over the bombing of Cambodia and covert interventions that earned him lasting accusations of war crimes.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1938–1943Fled Nazi Germany for the U.S.; studied accounting at CCNY, then drafted into the U.S. Army
- 1943–1949Served in U.S. Army intelligence in Europe, Battle of the Bulge; CIC agent tracking Gestapo and administering denazification
- 1950–1969Harvard professor of government, director of the Defense Studies Program; foreign-policy advisor to Rockefeller and Nixon campaigns
- 1969–1975National Security Advisor: led détente, China opening, SALT I negotiations; managed the secret Dobrynin backchannel
- 1971–1972Secret trips to Beijing, meeting Zhou Enlai; paved the way for Nixon's 1972 China visit
- 1973–1977Secretary of State: Paris Peace Accords, Nobel Peace Prize (1973), Middle East shuttle diplomacy; implicated in 1973 Chilean coup
- 1977–2023Founded Kissinger Associates; authored books and advised twelve U.S. presidents
Related historical events
- 1955–1975The Second Indochina WarUS national security adviserConcluded the Paris Accords through secret talks with Lê Đức Thọ.
- 1966–1976The Cultural RevolutionSecret visit of 1971Prepared Nixon’s visit with Zhou Enlai.
- 1969–1979Détente and the SALT NegotiationsArchitect of the linkage strategyAs National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State under Nixon, he ran the secret backchannel with Dobrynin that shaped SALT I.
- 1975The Helsinki Accordslead US negotiatorDismissed the CSCE as 'meaningless, a grandstand play,' yet steered the Geneva trade of frontier-inviolability language for a structured Basket III.
Chile: political responsibility for the coup and Southern Cone repression
Kissinger moved against Salvador Allende from the moment the Chilean president was elected. Eight days after the September 1970 vote, on September 12, he told CIA director Richard Helms by telephone, "We will not let Chile go down the drain"; three days later Nixon ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream" and named Kissinger supervisor of the covert efforts to keep Allende from taking office. His deputy Viron Vaky objected that coup plotting would bring "widespread violence and even insurrection" and that "what we propose is patently a violation of our own principles," but was ignored. The 1970 operation to block Allende's inauguration ended in the assassination of army commander-in-chief René Schneider and failed. Kissinger then fought off the State Department's recommendation of a modus vivendi, warning Nixon of Allende's "insidious model effect" and arguing for regime change. Immediately after the coup of September 11, 1973, Kissinger told Nixon in a phone call that the U.S. had "helped" it and had "created the conditions as best as possible." When State Department aides raised the mass repression that followed, he instructed his ambassador to convey to Pinochet "our strongest desires to cooperate closely and establish firm basis for cordial and most constructive relationship," and when his assistant secretary for inter-American affairs asked him what to tell Congress about reports of hundreds killed, he answered: "however unpleasant they act, this government is better for us than Allende was." Washington helped consolidate the Pinochet regime through economic and military aid, diplomatic support, and CIA assistance in creating Chile's secret police, DINA. At the height of the repression in 1975, Kissinger mocked his own staff for putting human rights on the agenda with Chile's foreign minister Patricio Carvajal; in June 1976 he told Pinochet, "You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende." This is the axis of documented political responsibility that cannot be told through the achievements of détente, SALT and the China opening alone.