There was only one Henry Kissinger

Kissinger became national security advisor and then secretary of state to President Richard Nixon and his successor Gerald Ford (1969-77).

Kissinger had been skeptical of the US ever being able to win in Vietnam. But he was also aware of the perceived risks of the US being seen to lose and so he spent four years trying to negotiate a US exit out of the war which would not look like defeat.

There had to be a decent interval between a peace agreement (January 1973) and the eventual inevitable North Vietnamese/ Viet Cong takeover in the South (April 1975). This attempted protection of US prestige overseas cost thousands of lives by prolonging the conflict.

The dramatic improvement in US-China relations was partly based on a misunderstanding of China's influence over North Vietnam. Richard Nixon had made his political reputation partly over this hostility towards China.

But Kissinger and Nixon thought that if China were offered the chance to improve its relations with the US, China could use its influence on North Vietnam to end the conflict or at least be more accommodating in Kissinger's secret peace negotiations.

Ironically Kissinger misunderstood Vietnamese history. There are two millennia of hostile relations between China and Vietnam. The Vietnamese leaders were nationalists who remembered their nation's checkered history with China and so were not willing to be manipulated by China. Playing the China card did not work, and the Vietnam conflict continued.

But Kissinger received the credit for bringing China in from the cold. The 1972 meeting between Nixon and Chairman Mao threw both the global left-wingers and right-wingers into political confusion. Here were two archenemies now on friendly terms.

Three years after Chairman Mao died, in 1979, the new Chinese leadership began the Chinese economic revival which continues (albeit now with some problems) to this day. China started to rejoin the global economy.

While some US media coverage of Kissinger's legacy has been hostile, in China he has been universally viewed as the country's "most valued friend". Kissinger was one of the few people on close terms with all the Chinese leaders since Chairman Mao.

Kissinger and Nixon also threw both the left and right into confusion by improving relations between the US and USSR. Again, Nixon had made a name for himself by being hostile towards the USSR (and accusing his early political opponents of being soft on communism).

However, Kissinger was aware of the long-standing animosity between China and the USSR (and Czarist Russia) with a long-standing history of border disputes in the Soviet Far East. He figured he could use the threat of improved relations with the USSR as leverage over China, as well as negotiating nuclear arms control agreements.

Kissinger and Nixon initiated a policy of easing tensions between the US and USSR via "detente". This led to major nuclear arms control breakthroughs (more than we have seen in recent years between the US and Russia, which seem to be now to be gearing up for a nuclear confrontation).