THE demise of Dr. Henry Kissinger at 100 is not just the passing away of a diplomat of yeasteryears. Age did finally catch up with him, all right, but Dr. Kissinger never actually retired from diplomacy and kept serving the American nation like only he could do -- effective, incisive, decisive -- and evasive too as diplomats often are. It was not long ago that he offered his superlative diplomatic skills to assess what China actually intended doing in the international ring of geopolitics. There, in China, he got a reception that a serving diplomat might be envious of. And the reason was simple -- the visitor was Dr. Henry Kissinger, THE Henry Kissinger. True, in India, people did have many reservations about the man and his method. Despite those, however, Dr. Kissinger enjoyed a fair degree of respect from the diplomatic community in the country simply because what he did or did not do mattered much. Such was the place the man occupied in international psyche. Such was the space he created for himself in the eternally slippery diplomatic domain.

 

Dr. Kissinger belonged to a rare species of men in international politics -- knowing the art and science of diplomacy in his own way that was way different from the normal. That was the reason why successive American Presidents depended heavily on his wise counsel on international matters and sought him out no matter his age and his reluctance about international realpolitik. By training, Dr. Henry Kissinger might have been an academician deeply engaged in teaching and writing research papers and earning not just a good living but also a very honourable position in the societal mind. Thanks to his truly deep knowledge of international politics, Dr. Kissinger got invited to work for the Government at the topmost level. From that moment on, he never looked back. In the process, he became an inveterate international traveller shuttling between world capitals, conversing with world leaders, sorting world problems -- and even adding to those if American interest called for that. The process did extract every ounce of energy of Professor Kissinger, all right. But that did not take away his wry and dry wit that led him once to assert, in effect, that never did in human history oil cause such a friction.

 

The reference was to the Middle East crisis which United States President Mr. Richard M. Nixon could have handled only if Dr. Kissinger was by his side. The Vietnam issue also extracted every grain of Dr. Kissinger’s energy, all right. But the reward was equally good -- he was a joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace with the Vietnamese leader Mr. Lee Duc Tho. Despite that honour, many chose to call Dr. Kissinger a warmonger. But then, in his three-part memoir titled ‘White House Years’, ‘Years of Renewal’ and ‘Years of Upheaval’, Dr. Kissinger makes a strong case justifying his own actions over time. Working with President Mr. Nixon and President Mr. Gerald Ford, Dr. Kissinger won both, good name and bad name. And he did not mind -- particularly when he knew he worked for American interest as per the given moment’s perception. The man did not develop an alligator skin, all right. He was sensitive to criticism. Yet, he had the temerity to ignore what he once called “uninformed” opinion. China was one of Dr. Kissinger’s passions. For President Mr. Nixon, he opened the Chinese doors, fell in love with the country and developed close ties with people in power there. His writings on China are, therefore, considered among the most penetrating and perceptive. He claimed often that he understood China because he saw the world through the Chinese lens. He claimed that the Chinese were not a practical enigma, though they spoke an entirely different language of diplomacy and international relations.

 

Dr. Kissinger claimed to have understood that lingo. In Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi, however, Dr. Kissinger -- and Mr. Richard Nixon -- met an absolutely complex person to handle during the Bangladesh War of 1971. Both those men did not know how to tackle the “stony and long silences” of the Indian leader even during diplomatic parleys, as Dr. Kissinger described Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s moods. The Bangladesh crisis was one string of events that Dr. Kissinger just found too hot to handle, too complex to understand, too faster-moving than he had comprehended previously. Mrs. Gandhi succeeded in slicing Pakistan into two pieces, and President Mr. Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger just did not know how to handle the issue. They just messed it up -- from their point of view, which they officially and privately agreed to an extent. On Kashmir, too, Dr. Kissinger had his own views, and expected India to conduct its diplomacy accordingly.

 

On that count, too, he did not meet with much success. No matter that, no matter even a little hostility the Indian leadership possibly felt towards him in those times, Dr. Kissinger was one man who was not ignored if he happened to say something on any issue. But such instances apart, the life of Dr. Henry Kissinger was one of stupendous success in a bigger number of diplomatic developments. He strode the centrestage of international realpolitik with aplomb, with a certain degree of arrogance as well. He spoke and the world listened. America, too, listened to his word with much attention. Such was his prowess in diplomacy, such was his capability in understanding the otherwise silent nuances of global geopolitics. He was not just a political intellectual. He was a genuine scholar of international affairs. His demise has stirred such a big bag of memories.