The Kissinger years: flawed legacy of the man behind US cold war policy

He shaped a world of superpowers but to those without power he was ruthless. How did one diplomat hold sway for so long?

Henry Kissinger was a complicated, insecure man who believed the US alone could impose order in a complicated, insecure world. For almost a decade from 1969, at the height of cold war instability, he became the international face of America - a very political diplomat almost as well known as his patron, Richard Nixon, the then president.

Kissinger was also a Harvard academic and self-styled grand strategist, a student of Castlereagh and Metternich who put his amoral theories of realist" foreign policy into practice with often horrific results. He viewed peoples and nations as movable, disposable pieces on a giant global chessboard. He was the burgermeister of realpolitik.