Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger died at the age of 100.
Late on Wednesday evening, Kissinger died at his Connecticut home, according to Kissinger Associates, Inc.
Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, was the top U.S. diplomat for two presidents as well as a prominent figure in U.S. foreign policy for the second half of the 20th century. He also won a Nobel Prize for brokering negotiations to end the Vietnam War, as well as being significantly remembered for his part in the U.S. bombing of Cambodia.
More from USA Today on Kissinger:
Kissinger, was the most celebrated U.S. statesman in modern times, helping former President Richard Nixon establish U.S. relations with China, negotiating the 1973 ceasefire with North Vietnam, reaching Cold War detente and arms agreements with the Soviet Union and conducting “shuttle diplomacy” to defuse Middle East tension. Kissinger at the same time was an intensely controversial figure and a lightning rod for critics of Nixon’s foreign policy, particularly in conduct of the Vietnam War and its expansion into Cambodia, which was followed by the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. He was hailed as a brilliant strategic thinker, a Harvard-educated political scientist who wielded power with pragmatic conservatism, sometimes described as “realpolitik,” or hard-nosed political realism.
The late politician was also the only American to simultaneously serve as secretary of state and national security adviser.
Leslie Gelb, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Kissinger’s “influence stayed with him after he left office, while that of all the others… dissipated.”
NBC News described him as being "one of the leading diplomats and international relations intellectuals of the 20th century."
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