Henry Kissinger, who dominated international relations with charisma and cynicism, has died

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : After graduation, he joined the Harvard faculty, dividing his time between the department of government and the Center for International Affairs.
56% : Kissinger reached the apex of his powers in 1973 when Nixon appointed him secretary of State while retaining him as national security advisor.
56% : "There are times," he told the lawmakers, "when the national interest is more important than the law."
55% : He graduated summa cum laude in 1950 with a degree in government.
55% : He obtained a master's degree in 1952 and a doctorate in 1954, also in government.
54% : In 1973, Kissinger replaced Rogers as secretary of State and became the only person to hold the posts of national security advisor and head of the State Department simultaneously.
52% : As national security advisor and secretary of State in the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, Kissinger dominated international relations from 1969 to 1977 with charisma, intellect and a wry cynicism.
50% : Toward that end, they emasculated the authority of Secretary of State William P. Rogers and imposed an unusually heavy-handed supervision on the Pentagon, CIA and other foreign policy centers.
44% : But Kissinger treated Nixon with extreme deference -- at least in public and to his face in private.
42% : In the White House, he terrified his staff and he humiliated Rogers, the beleaguered secretary of State.
42% : In the early 1970s, Kissinger -- at the behest of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran -- secretly encouraged Kurdish separatists in Iraq to rebel against the government of Saddam Hussein, providing the insurgents with $16 million in military aid, according to a congressional investigation.
39% : But some of Kissinger's closest friends said Bush's policy -- especially his refusal to negotiate with states like Iran and Syria and his overarching justification of the war as a way to spread democracy to the autocratic states of the Middle East -- was the antithesis of the "realism" that Kissinger advocated.
39% : One key incident occurred in 1974 when Kissinger argued that the United States should continue to supply arms to Turkey even though the Ankara government had violated U.S. law by using U.S.-supplied weapons in its invasion of Cyprus.

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