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| Chung Mong-joon, right, honorary chairman of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger / Courtesy of Asan Institute for Policy Studies |
By Kang Seung-woo
Chung Mong-joon, the honorary chairman of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, has made a donation to honor the work of Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. politician and scholar who had a significant influence on international relations.
Funds totaling $1 million (1.19 billion won) have been provided, half of which are to be given to the Center for Strategy and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., and the other half to the Henry Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
As an influential realist scholar in international relations, Kissinger served as national security adviser and secretary of state to U.S. President Richard Nixon, as well as secretary of state for the Gerald Ford administration.
Kissinger offered the insight that even though many foreign policy decisions are choices between evils, leaders should be wary of the perils of morally vacuous realism.
Kissinger's most important achievement was the stable management of the Cold War and accelerating its end through the improvement of U.S.-China relations. Kissinger was the chief architect of "detente," the policy of easing geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union, which began in the late 1960s. He helped the diplomatic policy continue into the 1970s, through which he strived to avoid the worst possible outcome of an escalation into nuclear war amidst the nuclear arms race between the two countries.
Kissinger, who graduated from Harvard University, visited Korea in 1950 during the Korean War, and analyzed the process of its outbreak. He submitted a memo titled, "U.S. Strategy," to William Elliot, a political adviser to then-President Harry Truman, and Paul Nitze, the director of Policy Planning for the State Department. His report served as the basis for future countermeasures to communist provocations.
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