By International Desk, The CNN :
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has died at the age of 100. He died on Wednesday (November 29) at his home in Connecticut, USA. BBC reported this information in a report on Thursday (November 30).
The German-born former diplomat died at his home in Connecticut, Kissinger Associates, the political consultancy founded by Kissinger, confirmed his death on Wednesday (November 29) evening.
Henry Kissinger served as America’s top diplomat and national security adviser during the Nixon and Ford administrations. Henry Kissinger completed 100 years on May 27 this year. During his long career, he played an important, and sometimes controversial, role in US foreign and security policy. He is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate on the one hand, and a ‘war criminal’ on the other.
Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923 in a Jewish family in Germany. His family fled Germany during the Nazi regime and came to New York, USA. This is where he grew up. Then in 1943 he became a US citizen. And served three years in the US Army and later in the Counter Intelligence Corps. After earning bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees, he taught international relations at Harvard.
In 1969, he was appointed National Security Advisor by then US President Richard Nixon. While serving as Secretary of State and Secretary of State under Nixon, he had a hand in many epoch-changing global events of the time. After Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Kissinger’s reign as the chief architect of US foreign policy waned. Still, he served as a diplomatic force under President Gerald Ford and continued to express strong opinions on diplomatic issues for the rest of his life. Even after 100 years, Kissinger has sometimes been admired and sometimes condemned by people. As popular as he was for his diplomatic acumen, he was also criticized for his lethally oppressive actions.
Kissinger is America’s most experienced diplomat. He always thought more about the future than the past. For supporters, Kissinger is a gifted diplomatic figure whose political achievements are second to none. To critics he is a war criminal. But he has always been admired politically and in the media. Historians believe that he was behind several bloody conflicts in Southeast Asia. He was the mastermind behind several bloody conflicts including prolonging the Vietnam War, spreading it to Cambodia, taking a controversial stand in the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence.
