The spectacular public life of Dr. Henry Kissinger, the preeminent conceptualist of American foreign policy in the latter half of the 20th century, is familiar to anyone with an interest in public affairs, especially those who are over the age of about 40. Dr. Kissinger passed last week at the age of 100, and what a century he lived.

Kissinger came to the United States at the age of 15, a refugee from Hitler’s Nazi Germany, only a few short years before Hitler plunged Europe and the world into war. Five years later, he returned to Germany, this time as a soldier in the U.S. Army, to fight the same Nazis from whom his family fled. After the war, his academic pursuits led him to the faculty of Harvard, where he quickly earned a reputation as an expert on nuclear weapons and foreign policy. That, in fact, happens to be the title of his first book, the one which brought him to public notice. He went on from there to serve as both secretary of state – the first immigrant to do so – and national security advisor. He’s the only person to have ever held both posts simultaneously, to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

It is unnecessary to point out Kissinger was a polarizing figure; to this day many on the far-left cling to the illusory notion he was a “war criminal”. He has been mocked for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Vietnam War in 1973, only for South Vietnam to be fatally invaded and crushed by the communist North a couple years later. In fact, Kissinger did succeed in negotiating a peace; had Congress kept their part of the deal and authorized military aid for the South during their time of most desperate need, Kissinger’s vision would have prevailed, and the history of Indochina likely would have turned out much better – and thousands of lives would have been saved. But of course, Kissinger could not have predicted the emasculation of the Nixon presidency due to Watergate, nor how that emasculation would spill over into Congress. It is an interesting side note that one of the senators who voted to abandon the South Vietnamese to their grisly fate was Joe Biden.

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The “war criminal” tag has generally been placed on Kissinger for the bombing of Cambodia, a designation which is utter nonsense. The North Vietnamese had essentially annexed eastern Cambodia and were using it as a military super-highway to shuttle men, weapons and material into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That is about as legitimate as military targets get. And considering the horrors that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge inflicted on Cambodia a few years later, Nixon and Kissinger were rather prescient in wanting to defeat those monsters when they tried.

Perhaps Kissinger’s signature moment was orchestrating the opening of China. That has widely been considered a brilliant strategic move, and so it was. The aim was to divide the two blocks of the communist world and, in so doing, isolate the Soviet Union, which was deemed the greater threat. This was successful, and very likely necessary; though the manner in which it was done was, and remains, questionable. Nixon and Kissinger’s trip to China was pockmarked with accolades to Mao Zedong and the cruel society he created that at times appeared as though they could have been written by Mao’s own propaganda team. To desire the accentuation of the differences between the two communist behemoths is one thing; to gloss that strategic imperative with moral confusion is quite another. In time, Kissinger himself grew to realize this, and confessed in an interview in the late 1990s that it ought to have been done “with less exuberance.”

Kissinger, it is safe to say, was something of a paradox. As much as he was viewed as a devil by the far left, he was also often criticized by the right. His devotion to Realpolitik was tinged with a certain degree of pessimism and underestimation about the West, its capabilities and resolve. This led to an overcautious approach, manifested in his constant pursuit of détente and ineffective arms control agreements with the Soviets. He lacked the boldness of action and determination that Ronald Reagan brought to bear, which ultimately won the Cold War.

And yet for all that he remained devoted to the doctrine of graduated response and was not afraid to back tough decisions that were nevertheless in his adopted country’s interest. He was neither the milquetoast dove some on the right saw him as, nor the warmonger the left saw him as. What he was, was a brilliant strategist, talented and prolific writer and a gifted academic. He was America’s elder statesman, whose influence far surpassed his relatively brief time in official public service. He will continue to be read, studied and quoted for decades to come – a parting gift to a nation he loved so well, and which is now impoverished at the passing of what may be its last great statesman.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.