vault backup: 2026-04-28 00:40:24

10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Henry A. Kissinger.md

@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+---
+tags:
+  - Person
+  - Diplomat
+  - Politician
+  - USA
+  - Secretary of State
+  - National Security Advisor
+  - Nuclear Policy
+  - Israel
+  - Nixon Administration
+  - Harvard University
+  - Cold War
+---
+Henry A. Kissinger was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under Presidents [[Richard Nixon]] and [[Gerald R. Ford]]. In the fall of 1967, while a [[Harvard University]] professor and consultant on [[Vietnam]] to the [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson]] administration, Kissinger visited [[Tel Aviv]] to teach for a week at the Israeli Defense College. At the end of his course, he went to [[William N. Dale]]'s office in the embassy and sent an urgent, top-secret message to the White House, warning about [[Dimona]] and concluding that [[Israel]] was making nuclear warheads.[^1]
+
+Kissinger approached inauguration day on January 20, 1969, convinced that [[Israel]]'s nuclear ambitions were justified and understandable. Once in office, he and [[Richard M. Nixon|Nixon]] endorsed [[Israel]]'s nuclear ambitions and shared a contempt for the 1968 [[Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty|Nonproliferation Treaty]]. Kissinger told his staff in the first months of 1969 that [[Japan]], as well as [[Israel]], would be better off with the bomb than without it, believing that nuclear weapons were essential to the national security of both nations. His view was pragmatic: most major powers would eventually obtain nuclear weapons, and the [[United States]] could benefit most by helping them do so rather than engaging in futile exercises in morality.[^2]
+
+Kissinger's support for [[Israel]]'s nuclear weapons program was widely known to the Israeli leadership. This was overtly signaled by the decision in 1969 to end the [[Floyd L. Culler, Jr.|Floyd Culler]] inspections of [[Dimona]], a move that became American policy for the next two decades, signifying that [[Israel]] had gone nuclear and the [[United States]] would not intervene.[^2]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 12.
+[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 16.