{"id":61416,"date":"2023-11-30T09:21:09","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T17:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=61416"},"modified":"2023-11-30T09:21:09","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T17:21:09","slug":"on-the-passing-of-henry-a-kissinger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=61416","title":{"rendered":"On the Passing of Henry A. Kissinger"},"content":{"rendered":"
11\/30\/2023 11:49 AM EST<\/div>\n

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Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State<\/p>\n

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Henry Kissinger once wrote that, \u201chowever different the great statesmen of history, they had a common sense of the past and a vision for the future.\u201d Henry was not only a student of history and strategy. Over the course of an extraordinary 100 years, he made both.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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His family fled to the United States from Nazi Germany in 1938, when he was 15 years old. Finding refuge in America, he later wrote, \u201cI personally experienced what our nation meant to the rest of the world, especially to the persecuted and disadvantaged.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He loved the nation that had taken in his family and, for the rest of his life, felt a duty and a desire to serve America, its people, its idea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Drafted into the U.S. Army at age 19, he joined the Allied forces that liberated Europe in World War Two, earning a Bronze Star for uncovering a Nazi sleeper cell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The timeless challenge facing all diplomats, Kissinger observed, is having to make pivotal decisions when time is short, information is incomplete, and consequences are unknowable. Unlike the historian, the academic, or the analyst, Henry wrote, \u201cThe statesman is permitted only one guess; his mistakes are irretrievable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As Secretary of State and as National Security Advisor, Henry made countless history-bending decisions. To serve as America\u2019s chief diplomat today is to move through a world that bears Henry\u2019s lasting imprint \u2013 from the relationships he forged, to the tools he pioneered, to the architecture he built.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Henry wrote that, \u201cFor any student, change is the law of life.\u201d A lifelong student, Henry anticipated and understood the forces changing our world, and helped us grapple with their implications. Even in his tenth decade, he was as determined to look to the future as he was to the past.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was Henry\u2019s enduring capacity to bring his strategic acumen and intellect to bear on the emerging challenges of each passing decade that led Presidents, Secretaries of State, National Security Advisors, and other leaders from both parties to seek his counsel. Including me \u2013 whether I was traveling to China more than 50 years after his transformative trip, or seeking his counsel as we shaped our approach to artificial intelligence, on which he was thinking, writing, and advising prolifically, up to the final weeks of his life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Few people were better students of history \u2013 and even fewer people did more to shape history \u2013 than Henry Kissinger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11\/30\/2023 11:49 AM EST   Antony...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61417,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61416\/revisions\/61417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}