David Kissinger, the son of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and National Security Adviser of the White House, who will turn 100 on the 27th, revealed his father’s health secret to the Washington Post on the 25th. (※Kissinger’s son is not a doctor with expertise in the secret of longevity, and is currently working as the president of a TV program production company.)
His father, Henry Kissinger, served as the White House National Security Advisor from 1969 to 1975 during the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations, and also served as Secretary of State for a period from 1973 to 1977. Kissinger has written two books since the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and is currently working on a third. He will also attend his 100th birthday celebrations in New York, London and his hometown of Fürth, Germany.
The son commented, “His longevity is especially miraculous, considering the ‘health regimen’ he has been following since he became an adult.” Kissinger’s staple food was Bratruurst, a German sausage made from pork, and Wiener Schnitzel, a dish of Austrian veal cutlets. that he enjoyed it only with
Nevertheless, as the reason why Henry Kissinger can still maintain mental and physical vitality, his son cited his tireless curiosity and sense of mission. His father’s ethos was always a ‘heat-seeking weapon’ to pinpoint and grapple with the existential crises of the time.
His father, Kissinger, was obsessed with the philosophical and practical impact of artificial intelligence (AI) from the time he turned 95. At Thanksgiving family dinners in recent years, his father would remind his grandsons of lines from the Terminator movie series as he contemplated the ramifications of this new technology. His son said, “His father immersed himself in the technical aspects of AI with the intensity of an MIT graduate student, blending his own unique philosophical and historical inspirations into discussions about its use.”
The son cited ‘a sense of duty’ as another secret to his father’s longevity. People caricatured him as a ‘hard realist’, but the son insisted, “My father was never a cold person.” He said that his father, Kissinger, whom he remembers from a young age, was a man of patriotism, loyalty, and ultra-partisanism, and he shared friendships with him regardless of political affiliation.
“Even during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Anatoly Dobrinin, then the Soviet ambassador to the United States, often came to our house and played chess between negotiations on issues affecting the entire planet,” said the son. had no illusions about the repressive nature of the Soviet regime, but saw these regular talks as easing tensions between two superpowers that seemed on the brink of conflict.”
The son insisted, “For my father, diplomacy was never a game, and he played diplomacy out of the terrible experiences and beliefs he had in Nazi Germany.” Henry Kissinger lost 13 family members and many friends in the Nazi Holocaust. He served in the liberation of Germany as an American soldier in World War II and saw how far humanity could fall.
“Neither son can be objective about his father’s legacy,” the son wrote, “but I am proud of my father’s efforts to build statecraft based on consistent principles and a clear perception of the realities of history.”
It is hard to find a person who has had as much influence on modern American diplomacy as Kissinger. In a 2015 survey by Foreign Policy, an American diplomatic magazine, in which American political scientists were selected as the ‘most outstanding Secretary of State of the past 50 years’, Kissinger ranked second with James Baker (17.7%) and third with Madeleine Albright (8.70%). ) was overwhelmingly number one (32.21%) than the combined. From 1973 to 1974, he conducted ‘shuttle diplomacy’ to and from the capitals of the Middle East, such as Cairo and Jerusalem, and laid the foundation for peace between Israel and Egypt that is still maintained today.
However, it has been the subject of much controversy. Opponents call Kissinger a “war criminal” because he advocated realist diplomacy based on the balance of power and led to human rights violations in many countries. Kissinger tolerated Indonesia’s brutal crackdown on East Timor’s independence, and supported CIA military coups against Chile’s first socialist president, Salvador Allende, and Argentina’s Isabel Peron.
After the Park Chung-hee government withdrew troops from the US 7th Division in 1971, it learned that it was planning to develop its own nuclear weapons by purchasing two nuclear reactors in Canada and a nuclear facility to reprocess spent fuel in France in 1975, and strongly blocked it. It was Kissinger too.
On the 7th, Kissinger had an interview with Tet Koppel (83) of ABC’s famous news program ‘Nightlien’ on CBS. When asked about the bombing of Cambodia to attack the rear of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces, which resulted in numerous civilian casualties, he staunchly defended the position he had taken at the time. “There are people on the station who question the legitimacy of this interview because of, as they put it, your criminality,” Koppel said. Kissinger replied, “That reflects their ignorance.” “It was neither conceived nor so enforced.”
When Coppel asked, “It’s clear that you and Nixon thought of air raids in Cambodia to cut off (the Viet Cong),” Kissinger replied, “Hey. We have bombarded the guerrillas fighting us with drones and various weapons in every administration in history.”
Coppell was persistent. “The results of the air strikes in Cambodia are particularly… ” Kissinger said, “As you host this program that I am 100 years old now, you made the subject matter of something that happened 60 years ago, and that was a necessary step. The younger generations now don’t think when they get emotional. If I had thought of it, I would not have asked such a question.”
In the midst of the Watergate scandal in the summer of 1974, a young Ted Koppel asked Secretary of State Kissinger, “If you think foreign policy is being manipulated for domestic political reasons, what would you do?” Kissinger said, “I’m resigning. speak openly. Foreign policy must reflect the enduring values of the American people and must not be the subject of partisan policy.”
The 100-year-old Kissinger was skeptical about running for president at the age of 80 (Biden) or 76 (Trump). “The presidency requires certain physical abilities. Maturity has its advantages, but its weaknesses include fatigue and limited ability to work.”
“If it’s Dr. Kissinger’s call, will President Xi Jinping of China answer the phone?” Coppel asked. “There is a good chance he will answer my call. Yes,” he said. What about Putin? “Perhaps yes.”
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