The basics: Who is Henry Kissinger and why do the Democrats keep talking about him?

Hannah Wise

Published: March 9, 2016

The Dallas Morning News

Henry Kissinger was in Dallas to speak at a black-tie dinner at the Fairmont Hotel sponsored by the Dallas Council on World Affairs, Southern Methodist University and several other organizations on March 23, 1976.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on Wednesday took the Democratic debate crowd on a most excellent adventure back to the 1970s. Rather than discussing Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan as the Republicans tend to do, the Democrats devoted debate time to Henry Kissinger.

The March 9 Democratic debate

Wednesday was not the first debate in which the former secretary of state was covered. Kissinger was also discussed at length in a Democratic debate last month.

“I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. Count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger,” Sanders said Feb. 12.

Kissinger popped up again during the most recent debate in Miami. But who is he?

    He is alive — and 92 years old.

    He was born in Germany and immigrated to the U.S. in 1938 to flee Nazi persecution of the Jews.

    He became a naturalized citizen in 1943.

    He was Richard Nixon’s secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.

    He won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping end U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

    He is credited with conducting secret diplomacy with communist China that helped Nixon open up the country to the West.

    He is blamed by liberals for supporting the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War that allowed the Khmer Rouge movement to take hold.

Sanders argued in both debates that Kissinger was one of the most harmful secretaries of state in U.S. history. He accused Clinton of being mentored by Kissinger.

“Kissinger was one of those people during the Vietnam era who talked about the domino theory. Not everybody remembers that. You do. I do. The domino theory, you know, if Vietnam goes, China, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,” he said last month.

The domino theory was first popularized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954 when discussing French colonial presence in Vietnam.

“You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly,” Eisenhower said. “So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.”

He was concerned that if Vietnam fell to communism, so would Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

In 1964, many, including Kissinger, used the domino theory to justify U.S. involvement in Vietnam. But by the end of the decade, the theory rang less true when the rise of communism in Vietnam did not spread rapidly throughout South Asia.

Kissinger later re-evaluated the domino theory through the lens of history for a 2008 article for Newsweek.

Sanders again brought up Kissinger on Wednesday night as the presidential hopeful criticized U.S. involvement in Latin America. Sanders accused the U.S. government and Kissinger of attempting to force regime change in such countries as Venezuela and Cuba to benefit American interests in the region.

More recently, The New York Times style section found Kissinger enjoying lunch at the Four Seasons in Manhattan. The reporter attempted to interview him about his suit but was promptly shut down by the former secretary of state.