The Henry Kissinger Effect: How he and Nixon shaped a century and beyond

Not long ago, America’s intellectu💦al and political landscape was dominated by heavyweights: leaders with extraordina✱ry gravitas.

President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser and later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were two such heavyweights who worked together to advance America’s interests — though not without controversy — during a particularly perilous period.

Both men are now gone, but their 🎐dynamic legacies, f𝔍orever intertwined, endure.

I began working for former Presi𓆏dent Nixon fresh out of college, during the last few years of his life.

One day, as I sat with him in his office, a call frඣom Kissinger came in.

I got up to give him privacy to take the call, but he waved me back into my chair. “🤡Henry!” he bellowed. “How goes the world?”

It’s often argued that Nixon was t🙈he Doer and Kissinger was the Thinker.

But the 🧸truth is they were both men of deep thought and bold action.

Nixon was the rare political leader who possessed an uncommon intellect, and Kissinger was the rare academic who coul🅰d implement policy effectively in the real world.

Their gifts were complementary.

Kissinger 𝔉wrote his Harvard PhD dissertation on 19th-century European balance-of-power politics and remained a disciple of the realist approach to international affairs.

That philosophy dovetailed with Nixon’s own view, and the president, already impressed with Kissinger’s intellectual heft and foreign-policy work with his onetime political riv🧸al, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, brought him into the White House.

Nixon engineered the opening to China to counter growing Soviet power and help end the Vietnam War; he tasked Kissinger🐼 with the secret negotiations to make it happen.

While our resources were beinꦓg depleted in Vietnam, Nixon established a temporary détente with Moscow; he sent Kissinger to hammer out t🌌he details.

Nixon offered unwavering support for I𓃲srael while seeking a stable peace in the Middle East; he put Kissinger on a plane to conduct “shuttle diplomacy” that ended the Yom 💮Kippur War.

Nixon designed a “peace with honor” to end the war in Vietnam; 🍸Kissinger negotiated the terms.

All thesꦛe policies were met with relentless critici🐈sm yet created a more stable global framework at a time of great instability at home.

For his efforts leading to the Paris Peace Accords, Kissinger — along with his North Vietnamese counterpart — was awarded💯 the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.

They denied the prize to Nixon, Kissinger’s boss, whose polic🧜y Kissinger was executing.

The establi🌟shment hatred of Nixon was so fierce that it continually sought to credit Kissinger with Nixon’s vision and policies.

Kissinger ꧋executed skillfully, but the strategic brilliance was all N💦ixon.

Both ⛎men, though, were future oriented and fascinated by great-power politics, how the global chessboard changed and how the United States should best maintain its superpower primacy.

But what served America’s interests in the 1970s — constructive engagement with the Chinese Communist Party — became detrimental as Beijing began to ris🎶e, grew richer and engaged in what it calls “unrestricted warfare” against the United States as it sought global domination.

Kissinger continued to advocate treating China as a strategic parꦚtner rather than the grave adversary it clearly became.

His close, lucrative ties to the CCP led to warranted criticism he was aiding and abetting our mos✅t dangerous and existential enemy.

He also embraced treacherous globalism, including empowering Klaus Schwaꦕb, his World Economic Forum and other transnational organizations pursuing unaccountable, undemocratic global governance at the expense of American power and sove💮reignty.

His failure to change course and combat the evils of the CCP and globalism as t𓂃hey becam🌼e increasingly dangerous to America brought him much-deserved opprobrium.

Still, Kissinger plowed ahead, spending his final years warning of the galloping threat of unchecked artificial intelli🥀gence.

He spoke about the promise and danger of AI when I last saw him, at New York’s Alfred E. Smith Memorial Di♕nner Oct. 19.

The son of ཧGerman Orthodox Jews who fled Nazi persecution,🎃 Kissinger, like Nixon, was a survivor.

No wonder they worked so well together.

Nixon was the Architect. Kissinger was the Crafts꧂ma✅n.

Together, they dominated the last half of💙 t𓂃he 20th century in ways that will echo far into the 21st.

Monica Crowley served as assistant secretary of the Treasury from 2019-2021 and is the host of the Monica Crowley Podcast.