Kissinger, who died Wednesday at 100, drew praise as a skilled defender of U.S. interests. On social media he was widely called a war criminal who left lasting damage throughout the world.

“America has lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices” on foreign affairs, said former President George W. Bush, striking a tone that many high-level officials, past and present, tried to convey.

“I have long admired the man who fled the Nazis as a young boy from a Jewish family, then fought them in the United States Army,” Bush said in a statement. “When he later became Secretary of State, his appointment as a former refugee said as much about his greatness as it did America’s greatness.”

Kissinger served two presidents, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, and dominated foreign policy as the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam and established ties with China.

In China, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin called Kissinger an “old friend and good friend of the Chinese people, and a pioneer and builder of China-U.S. relations.”

Many on social media in China mourned his passing. State broadcaster CCTV shared on social media an old segment showing Kissinger’s first secret visit to China in 1971, when he broached the possibility of establishing U.S.-China relations and met with then-Premier Zhou Enlai.

Kissinger exerted uncommon influence on global affairs long after he left office. In July, for instance, he met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing while U.S.-Chinese relations were at a low point.

Criticism of Kissinger, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was especially strong on social media, where many posted celebratory videos in reaction to his death.

A Rolling Stone magazine headline said: “Henry Kissinger, war criminal beloved by America’s ruling class, finally dies.”

“Henry Kissinger’s bombing campaign likely killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians — and set [a] path for the ravages of the Khmer Rouge,” Sophal Ear, a scholar at Arizona State University who studies Cambodia’s political economy, wrote on the Conversation website.

“The cluster bombs dropped on Cambodia under Kissinger’s watch continue to destroy the lives of any man, woman or child who happens across them,” Sophal Ear wrote.

The head of the independent Documentation Center of Cambodia, Youk Chhang, described Kissinger’s legacy as “controversial.” Well over half of Cambodia’s current population was born after the Khmer Rouge was ousted in 1979 and Kissinger left government, so there is not much awareness among Cambodians about his record, he said.

Kissinger initiated the Paris negotiations that ultimately provided a face-saving means to get the U.S. out of a costly war in Vietnam.

Nixon’s daughters, Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, said their father and Kissinger enjoyed “a partnership that produced a generation of peace for our nation.”

“Dr. Kissinger played an important role in the historic opening to the People’s Republic of China and in advancing detente with the Soviet Union, bold initiatives which initiated the beginning of the end of the Cold War. His ‘shuttle diplomacy’ to the Middle East helped to advance the relaxation of tensions in that troubled region of the world,” the Nixon daughters said in a statement.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was “in awe” of Kissinger.

“Of course, like anyone who has confronted the most difficult problems of international politics, he was criticized at times, even denounced,” Blair said. But I believe he was always motivated not from a coarse ‘realpolitik,’ but from a genuine love of the free world and the need to protect it. He was a problem solver, whether in respect of the Cold War, the Middle East or China and its rise.”

Israeli President Issac Herzog told Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Tel Aviv on Thursday that Blinken is “following in the footsteps of a giant, a titan, Dr. Henry Kissinger, who has left us peacefully tonight.”

“He laid the cornerstone of the peace agreement, which [was] later signed with Egypt, and so many other processes around the world I admire,” Herzog said. ”I always felt his love and compassion for Israel in his belief in the Jewish state.”

Blinken said Kissinger “really set the standard for everyone who followed in this job. I was very privileged to get his counsel many times, including as recently as about a month ago. He was extraordinarily generous with his wisdom, with his advice. Few people were better students of history. Even fewer people did more to shape history than Henry Kissinger.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a message to Kissinger’s wife that the late diplomat was “a wise and far-sighted statesman” and that his name was “inextricably linked with a pragmatic foreign policy line, which at one time made it possible to achieve detente in international tensions and reach the most important Soviet-American agreements that contributed to the strengthening of global security.”

French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “Henry Kissinger was a giant of history. His century of ideas and of diplomacy had a lasting influence on his time and on our world.”

Leaders of Kissinger’s native Germany paid tribute to the former secretary of State.

“His commitment to the transatlantic friendship between the USA and Germany was significant, and he always remained close to his German homeland,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

In a message of condolences to Kissinger’s family, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote that “with his detente and disarmament policy, Henry Kissinger laid the foundation for the end of the Cold War and the democratic transition in Eastern Europe” that led to Germany’s reunification.