In memory
A grand strategist who helped reshape the world
Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state and national security adviser under two presidents and advised many more, passed away November 29, 2023, at the age of one hundred. Kissinger joined the Council’s board in 1967 and became its longest-serving member.
“Kissinger was the ultimate transatlantic ideal,” said Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe. “His upbringing, in which he overcame persecution in Nazi Germany to triumph in the United States, prepared him for the complexities of power in a way it did for few others. He was an unparalleled thinker whose expertise across multiple and disparate worlds allowed him to draw insights from all of them and to move between them with ease.”
Kissinger received all of the Council’s highest honors: the Distinguished Service Award, the Distinguished International Leadership Award, and the Global Citizen Award.
“His friendships were galvanized by a combination of remarkable humor and penetrating geopolitical insights—a combination that he exhibited during his many appearances at the Atlantic Council,” Kempe added.
Kissinger at Atlantic Council galas
“He’s as much a person of principle as a person of power,” and one who “knows how to blend those two together in their proper proportion.”
The Atlantic Council remains as important and with the need of even more dynamism than when it was originally founded.
