[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 197 (Thursday, November 30, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S5683]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Remembering Henry A. Kissinger

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the past hundred years have seen few, 
if any, strategic thinkers shape world events as profoundly as Henry 
Kissinger. Few academics have had such deep experience in the practice 
of foreign policy. Few political appointees have had such bureaucratic 
savvy. Few senior government officials have carried such intellectual 
heft.
  Who else could claim to have advised more than one-fourth of all U.S. 
Presidents, to have taken a seat across from every Chinese head of 
state since Chairman Mao?
  Yesterday marked the end of the extraordinary Kissinger century.
  If you consider just the early chapters of this remarkable life, you 
might expect Henry Kissinger to be the quintessential idealist. But by 
the age of 30, he had escaped Nazi brutality for America, returned home 
a decorated veteran of the campaign to defeat Hitler, and launched a 
successful career as an Ivy League academic.
  Of course, instead of an idealist, this made-for-Hollywood origin 
story produced one of the world's staunchest realists. The Kissinger 
calculus was grounded in pragmatic assessments of national interest, 
the use of military force, and diplomatic compromise; and, by 
extension, so were decades of American foreign policy.
  Several years ago, one particularly apt assessment of Henry 
Kissinger's legacy pointed out that he didn't believe ``the arc of 
history makes house calls.'' In other words, if the free world waits 
passively for its noble convictions to be vindicated, we will be 
waiting quite a while.
  Instead, Henry Kissinger knew that the organizing principle for 
American strategy must be American interests, and he left no room for 
wondering what this approach looked like in practice. His careful 
negotiations ushered in a period of detente with America's greatest 
20th century rival, and his bold diplomacy opened the door to a 
relationship with China that rebalanced Cold War dynamics in America's 
favor.
  Of course, the enduring relevance of Dr. Kissinger's work is due in 
no small part to his prolific participation in public discourse on 
foreign policy and grand strategy, up until the very end. The author of 
21 books confounded scholars half his age with the pace and the volume 
of his brilliant scholarship on topics ranging from the history of 
diplomacy to artificial intelligence.
  In perhaps the truest expression of both his intellectual horsepower 
and understanding of power, he remains the only American statesman to 
have served as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor at the 
very same time.
  Today, the world Henry Kissinger leaves behind bears his indelible 
mark. The Nation he served--the global superpower he helped create--
owes him our gratitude.
  Elaine and I, along with so many of Dr. Kissinger's friends in the 
Senate, send our condolences to his wife Nancy, his children David and 
Elizabeth, and to the entire Kissinger family as they mourn a great 
American.