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Dick Cheney, the former Republican vice-president who championed US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq after the September 11 attacks and then became a fierce critic of Donald Trump, has died aged 84, according to a statement from his family.
Cheney served as vice-president during the presidency of George W Bush between 2001 and 2009, capping a political career that included tenures as defence secretary under George HW Bush and White House chief of staff under Gerald Ford.
He was best known for his hawkish views on foreign policy and the use of American military power, including a pivotal role in advising George W Bush to order the invasion of Iraq in 2003. That presidential decision plunged America into a lengthy and costly Middle Eastern conflict that many Republicans and Democrats would later judge to have been a mistake.
Cheney’s influence on the younger Bush during their time in office means he is widely considered to have been one of the most powerful — if not the most powerful — US vice-president in American political history. But his influence began to dim as Bush’s presidency approached its end.
After leaving office in 2009, Cheney’s wing of the Republican party started to lose sway, as foreign policy isolationists led by Trump gained traction on the right.
By 2022, Cheney emerged as a staunch critic of the 45th and now 47th US president, particularly after his daughter Liz Cheney, then a congresswoman from Wyoming, co-led a probe into the January 6 2021 riot at the US Capitol.
“There has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Dick Cheney said in an ad supporting his daughter Liz in her doomed re-election bid against a Trump-backed Republican challenger.
“He tried to steal the last election, using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” he added.
His family said on Tuesday that Cheney died from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.
“For decades, Dick Cheney served our nation, including as White House Chief of Staff, Wyoming’s Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and vice-president of the United States . . . We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country,” the statement said.
Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in January 1941 and spent much of his childhood in Casper, Wyoming, where his family had moved.
His career in Washington began during Richard Nixon’s administration in 1969, when he worked alongside Donald Rumsfeld, an ideological twin with similar views on US foreign policy who would be defence secretary during the 2001-2009 Bush administration.
Cheney would go on to serve as first deputy White House chief of staff and then chief of staff under Gerald Ford. He moved to Capitol Hill after being elected as a representative from Wyoming, where he would remain during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
George HW Bush tapped Cheney to be defence secretary, handing him a portfolio that would include a leading role in shaping the first Gulf war in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
With Bill Clinton in the White House for most of the 1990s, Cheney moved to the private sector as chief executive of Halliburton, the oil services group.
George W Bush made him a key adviser to his 2000 presidential campaign, charging him with the task of running the search for a vice-presidential nominee. But at the end of the process, Bush decided to select Cheney.
