An expert on Public Administration

Hi guys! I hope you are very well! On this weeks post I'm going to talk about a very important person in the history of the USA and for the history of Public Administration systems: Henry Kissinger, he was the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the Nixon and Ford's administrations.

Of Jewish ascendancy, Nixon was born on May 27th, 1923 in the state of Bavaria, Germany; In 1938, his family escaped away from the Nazis, arriving at New York on September 5th. He started studying accounting at the City College after high school.

In 1943, Kissinger was recruited by the US Army, fighting in Europe under the 84th Division. It was during the occupation of Germany that Kissinger began his experience as an administrator, organizing the civil structure of the towns occupied by his division.

After the war, Kissinger restarted his political science studies at the famous Harvard University, graduating in 1950.

Kissinger, Zhou Enlai and Mao, 1970.

An important Republican Party member, respected for his knowledge, Richard Nixon made him Secretary of State after winning the elections in 1968.

A proponent of Realpolitik (international politics based on economical and practical circumstances instead of Ideological contents), Kissinger was the main pusher of the 1973 Paris Agreement that put an end to US occupation of Vietnam, as well as the 1971 agreement that improved the relationship between USA and China. Also, he pursued a detente politic toward the USSR, evading major conflicts with the Brezhnev government. However, his anti-communism and Realpolitik were controversial, especially since he advocated the reinforcement of the relations with Pakistan (even as the Pakistan government ordered the massacre of tens of thousands Bangladeshis during the 1971 War of Independence), was the main instigator of the CIA involvement in Chile that culminated in the 1973 Coup that deposed (and killed) Salvador Allende, supported some of the worst dictatorships in the history of the 20^th century (from Suharto in Indonesia to Somoza in Nicaragua, Stroessner in Paraguay and off course Pinochet in Chile), and didn’t care about the structure of the Westernized governments the US Armed Forces left behind in Indochina: Only 2 years after the Paris Agreement, South Vietnam was invaded and ceased to exist, the communist Pathet Lao deposed the monarchy in Laos, and Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge, beginning the horrendous Cambodian Genocide that killed 3 million people in only 2 years.

Kissinger is important to Public Administration because he was the responsable behind the end of the US Occupation of Vietnam and the main investigator of the CIA intervention in Latin America, Africa & Asia, and also he contributed to the re-establishment of relations between USA and China.

I hope you enjoyed my post, see you soon!