Henry Kissinger was the most famous and most controversial American diplomat of the second half of the 20th century. Escaping Nazi persecution in the 1930s, serving in the American Army of occupation in Germany after 1945, and then pursuing a successful academic career at Harvard University, Kissinger had already achieved national prominence as a foreign policy analyst and defense intellectual when he was appointed national security adviser by President Richard Nixon in January 1969. Kissinger quickly became the president’s closest adviser on foreign affairs and worked with Nixon to change American foreign policy in response to domestic upheaval caused by the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nixon and Kissinger’s initiatives, primarily détente with the Soviet Union, the opening to the People’s Republic of China, and ending American involvement in the Vietnam War, received strong domestic support and helped to bring about Nixon’s re-election landslide in 1972. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Nixon appointed Kissinger secretary of state in August 1973. As Nixon’s capacity to govern deteriorated, Kissinger assumed all-but presidential powers, even putting American forces on alert during the Yom Kippur war and then engaging in “shuttle diplomacy” in the Middle East, achieving the first-ever agreements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Syria. Kissinger retained a dominating influence over foreign affairs during the presidency of Gerald Ford, even as he became a lightning rod for critics on both the left and right of the political spectrum. Although out of public office after 1977, Kissinger remained in the public eye as a foreign policy commentator, wrote three volumes of memoirs as well as other substantial books on diplomacy, and created a successful international business-consulting firm. His only governmental positions were as chair of the Commission on Central America in 1983–1984 and a brief moment on the 9/11 Commission in 2002.
