[6] Considered by many American scholars to have been an effective secretary of state,[7] Kissinger was also accused by critics of war crimes for the civilian death toll of the policies he pursued and for his role in facilitating U.S. support for authoritarian regimes.

[32] Kissinger earned his Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa[33] in political science from Harvard College in 1950, where he lived in Adams House and studied under William Yandell Elliott.

Notably, Kissinger's Primat der Außenpolitik (Primacy of foreign policy) approach to diplomacy took it for granted that as long as the decision-makers in the major states were willing to accept the international order, then it is "legitimate" with questions of public opinion and morality dismissed as irrelevant.

[63] Like Nixon, Kissinger believed that relations with China would help the United States exit the Vietnam War and obtain long-term strategic benefits in confrontations with the Soviet Union.

[68] Kissinger's trips paved the way for the groundbreaking 1972 summit between Nixon, Zhou, and Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, as well as the formalization of relations between the two countries, ending 23 years of diplomatic isolation and mutual hostility.

Kissinger's diplomacy led to economic and cultural exchanges between the two sides and the establishment of "liaison offices" in the Chinese and American capitals, though full normalization of relations with China would not occur until 1979.

[85] On August 1, 1972, Kissinger met Thọ again in Paris, and for first time, he seemed willing to compromise, saying that political and military terms of an armistice could be treated separately and hinted that his government was no longer willing to make the overthrow of Thiệu a precondition.

[101] On April 15, 1975, Kissinger testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee, urging Congress to increase the military aid budget to South Vietnam by another $700 million to save the ARVN as the PAVN was rapidly advancing on Saigon, which was refused.

[143] Only on March 19, 1974, did the King end the oil embargo, after Sadat reported to him that the United States was being more "even handed" and after Kissinger had promised to sell Saudi Arabia weapons that it had previously denied under the grounds that they might be used against Israel.

[154] In 1970, Kissinger parroted to Nixon the United States Department of Defense's position that the country should maintain control over the Panama Canal, which was a reversal of the commitment by the Lyndon Johnson administration.

An October 1987 investigative report in The Nation broke the story of how, in a June 1976 meeting in the Hotel Carrera in Santiago, Kissinger gave the military junta in neighboring Argentina the "green light" for their own clandestine repression against leftwing guerrillas and other dissidents, thousands of whom were kept in more than 400 secret concentration camps before they were executed.

During a meeting with Argentine foreign minister César Augusto Guzzetti, Kissinger assured him that the United States was an ally but urged him to "get back to normal procedures" quickly before the U.S. Congress reconvened and had a chance to consider sanctions.

Ambassador to Buenos Aires Robert C. Hill "'was shaken, he became very disturbed, by the case of the son of a thirty-year embassy employee, a student who was arrested, never to be seen again,' recalled Juan de Onis, former reporter for The New York Times.

In a letter to The Nation editor Victor Navasky, protesting publication of the article, Kissinger claimed that: "At any rate, the notion of Hill as a passionate human rights advocate is news to all his former associates."

'[177]According to declassified state department files, Kissinger also hindered the Carter administration's efforts to halt the mass killings by the 1976–1983 military dictatorship by visiting the country as Videla's personal guest to attend the 1978 FIFA World Cup and praising the regime.

Kissinger later described these efforts as "one of our policy successes in Africa" and praised Mobutu as "courageous, politically astute" and "relatively honest in a country where governmental corruption is a way of life".

[189] After Nixon was forced to resign in the Watergate scandal, Kissinger's influence in the new presidential administration of Gerald R. Ford was somewhat diminished after he was replaced by Brent Scowcroft as National Security Advisor during the "Halloween Massacre" cabinet reshuffle of November 1975.

[200] In September 1989, The Wall Street Journal's John Fialka disclosed that Kissinger took a direct economic interest in U.S.–China relations in March 1989 with the establishment of China Ventures, Inc., a Delaware limited partnership, of which he was chairman of the board and chief executive officer.

[213] Kissinger—along with William Perry, Sam Nunn, and George Shultz—called upon governments to embrace the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, and in three op-eds in The Wall Street Journal proposed an ambitious program of urgent steps to that end.

"[228] In an interview with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution on April 3, 2008, Kissinger reiterated that even though he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq,[229] he thought that the George W. Bush administration rested too much of its case for war on Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

[232] During the Games, he participated with Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, film star Jackie Chan, and former British prime minister Tony Blair at a Peking University forum on the qualities that make a champion.

[240] In July 2023, Kissinger traveled to Beijing to meet with Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2018 for engaging in the purchase of combat aircraft from a Russian arms exporter.

[246] On March 5, 2014, The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by Kissinger, 11 days before the Crimean referendum on whether Autonomous Republic of Crimea should officially rejoin Ukraine or join neighboring Russia.

[251] In 2019, Kissinger wrote about the increasing tendency to give control of nuclear weapons to computers operating with artificial intelligence (AI) that: "Adversaries' ignorance of AI-developed configurations will become a strategic advantage".

"[61] Historian Jeffrey Kimball developed the theory that Kissinger and the Nixon administration accepted a South Vietnamese collapse provided a face-saving decent interval passed between U.S. withdrawal and defeat.

According to Kadura, the "decent interval" concept has been "largely misrepresented", in that Nixon and Kissinger "sought to gain time, make the North turn inward, and create a perpetual equilibrium" rather than acquiescing in the collapse of South Vietnam.

[168] In April 2002, a petition for Kissinger's arrest was filed in the High Court of Justice in London by human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, citing the destruction of civilian populations and the environment in Indochina during the years 1969–1975.

[284][285][286][287] American chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain wrote in A Cook's Tour: "Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands...

[313][275] China News Service stated in its obituary for Kissinger that "Today, this 'old friend of the Chinese people,' who had a sharp vision and a thorough understanding of world affairs, has completed his legendary life".

[316] European Council president Charles Michel called Kissinger a "strategist with attention to the smallest detail" and "a kind human and a brilliant mind who, over 100 years, shaped the [destinies] of some of the most important events of the century."