Free Henry Kissinger Essay Sample

Henry Kissinger is a renowned American politician, political scientist and diplomat. Kissinger was born in the German town of Furth to the family of law-abiding and religious Jews of the middle class, who under the threat of Nazi persecution were forced to flee to the United States in 1938. He successfully graduated from the New York City College in 1943 and was drafted into the US Army. He served in Europe, first as a translator, and then as an intelligence officer. Only in 1947, two years after the end of hostilities, Kissinger left in reserve and returned to America. In 1954, he graduated from Harvard University with a degree of Doctor of Political Sciences. Kissinger`s thesis topic later became the subject of his first book:  “A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22”.
Kissinger's academic career has been very successful. In 1957, he became a professor of public administration and international relations at Harvard University. In his assessment of US foreign policy, Kissinger followed the line of the "realists" who, unlike the "idealists", advocated for a more pragmatic political course. In 1957, he published the book "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy", suggesting to give up the military-political doctrine of "massive retaliation" and move to a more flexible strategy of limited use of nuclear weapons - what has been called the strategy of "flexible response" and became the official doctrine of NATO in the 1960s. This publication brought him fame in academic and political circles. He became employed by the government as an expert on security issues with President Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson. He also worked as a consultant of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1956-1960), US National Security Council (1961-1962), the Agency for Arms Control and Disarmament United States (1965-1969).
In 1968, he was appointed national security adviser in Nixon`s administration. Kissinger was one of the developers of the policy of détente, with the purpose to establish an ongoing dialogue with the US, the Soviet Union and China, to mitigate the international climate, terminate local conflicts, and to prevent global nuclear war. During his career, Kissinger advocated for the signing of the agreement between Brezhnev and Nixon on the limitation of strategic offensive arms, helped to settle two Palestinian-Israeli Conflicts (1968 and 1973) and to end the Vietnam War, for which he, together with the President of South Vietnam, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 year.
In a widely known book "Diplomacy", Kissinger examined the geopolitical situation after the Cold War. He proclaimed the moral victory of liberal democracy over communism. Further development of the international community, according to Kissinger, is in the expansion of zone of democracy and an increment of the number of countries with market economy. But Kissinger is far from idealistic, i.e. purely moral understanding of geopolitics in the spirit of Woodrow Wilson or Bill Clinton. He is not infected with the euphoria of victory in the Cold War, and as a true realist, sees the future of the world as not "unipolar" led by the United States (although America, in his opinion, will be the "first among equals"), but five-six "polar" order which will be maintained on the balance of competing national interests of the above-mentioned centers of power.

Works Cited

Henry. A. Kissinger, Biography, Retrieved from: http://www.henryakissinger.com/biography.html
A timeline of the life of Henry Kissinger, The Telegraph, Retrieved from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8818916/A-timeline-of-the-life-of-Henry-Kissinger.html
Kissinger, Henry. Diplomacy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Print