(MENAFN- Live Mint) Dick Cheney, the powerful and polarising former Vice President of the United States who reshaped global geopolitics after 9/11 and left an indelible mark on the modern Republican Party, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released by his family.

A commanding figure in Washington for nearly half a century, Cheney served as the 46th vice president under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. He was widely regarded as the most influential occupant of the vice-presidential office in American history - a man whose ideas, authority and will helped steer the United States into two decades of war.

His death brings to a close a remarkable, often controversial career that spanned the Cold War, the Gulf War, the“war on terror”, and the populist upheavals that later remade the Republican Party he once helped define.

Who Was Dick Cheney - and How Did He Rise to Power?

Richard Bruce Cheney was born on 30 January 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, and raised in Casper, Wyoming. His journey from the rural American West to the centre of global power was neither straightforward nor preordained.

After struggling academically at Yale, Cheney dropped out and worked on power lines before returning to university in Wyoming, where he completed bachelor's and master's degrees in political science. He married his high school sweetheart, Lynne Vincent, in 1964 - a union that would anchor his life and ambitions.

Cheney's political ascent began in earnest during the Nixon and Ford administrations. A protégé of Donald Rumsfeld, he served as White House Chief of Staff at just 34, becoming one of the youngest to hold the post. His calm, disciplined temperament and talent for navigating bureaucracy earned him a reputation as a consummate insider.

Elected to the House of Representatives in 1978, Cheney represented Wyoming's sole congressional district for six terms, rising to House Minority Whip and establishing himself as a staunch conservative voice in national politics.

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush appointed him as Secretary of Defense, where Cheney oversaw Operation Desert Storm, the swift U.S.-led campaign that expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991. The success of that operation cemented his reputation as a formidable strategic mind and trusted steward of American military power.

Why Was Cheney Considered America's Most Powerful Vice President?

After leaving government to head Halliburton, a Texas-based oil services giant, Cheney was drawn back into politics in 2000 when George W. Bush asked him to lead the search for a vice-presidential candidate. In a fateful twist, Cheney recommended himself.

As Bush's running mate - and later his vice president - Cheney became the architect of the administration's most consequential policies. Reserved, methodical and deeply versed in national security affairs, he was described by colleagues as“the steady hand behind the presidency”.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Cheney was in the White House as hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center. From a secure bunker beneath the West Wing, he took command of the immediate crisis, reportedly authorising the shoot-down of further hijacked aircraft to protect Washington.

“At that moment, you knew this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act,” Cheney later recalled in a 2002 interview with CNN's John King.

That day transformed him - and, by extension, the nation. Cheney became the principal advocate for a new, aggressive security posture that would come to define the next two decades: the“war on terror.”

How Did Cheney Shape the War on Terror and the Invasion of Iraq?

Cheney's influence was nowhere more evident than in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Convinced that Saddam Hussein's regime posed a grave and imminent threat, he warned repeatedly of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and supposed links to al-Qaeda.

These assertions - later discredited by intelligence reviews and congressional investigations - laid the groundwork for a war that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives and reshape America's standing in the world.

Cheney maintained that he and his colleagues acted on the“best available intelligence” at the time.“It was the right thing to do then. I believed it then and I believe it now,” he told CNN in 2015.

Even as public disillusionment with the Iraq War grew, Cheney never recanted.“Any claim that the data was distorted, hyped, or fabricated,” he said in 2005,“is utterly false.”

His unwavering defence of policies that included“enhanced interrogation techniques” - condemned internationally as torture - and the indefinite detention of terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay deepened his image as both patriot and villain.“I would do it again in a minute,” Cheney said in response to a 2014 Senate report that denounced such practices as brutal and ineffective.

Did Cheney Have Regrets About His Legacy?

Cheney's tenure ended with plummeting approval ratings and deep public scepticism of the wars he had helped launch. Yet he expressed little remorse. To the end, he saw himself as a man who had done what history demanded.

“I did what I believed was necessary to defend the country,” he once said.“And I can live with that.”

He left office in 2009 reviled by Democrats, distrusted by moderates, and celebrated by a dwindling faction of hawkish conservatives who saw him as the last guardian of muscular American exceptionalism.

How Did His Relationship with Donald Trump Transform His Final Years?

In a striking turn of fate, Cheney - who had embodied Republican orthodoxy for decades - became one of the party's most scathing critics under Donald Trump. Initially supportive of Trump's 2016 campaign, Cheney broke ranks after the January 6th, 2021, insurrection, denouncing Trump as a“coward” and a“threat to the republic.”

“In our nation's 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney declared in 2022.“He is a coward. A real man wouldn't lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it. He knows it, and deep down, I think most Republicans know.”

His daughter, Liz Cheney, became a central figure in the effort to hold Trump accountable - and sacrificed her political career in the process. The elder Cheney stood beside her, unrepentant, as the party turned against them both.

In what many viewed as an act of political defiance, Cheney cast his final presidential vote in 2024 for Democrat Kamala Harris, citing his“duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution.”

What Were Cheney's Later Years Like?

Despite a lifetime of ill health, Cheney remained intellectually vigorous in retirement. After surviving five heart attacks, he received a heart transplant in 2012, which he described as“the gift of life itself.”

He chronicled his experiences in two memoirs - In My Time (2011) and Heart: An American Medical Odyssey (2013) - and co-authored a third book with his daughter Liz. Though rarely seen in public, Cheney remained a potent figure in conservative debates, warning against isolationism and the erosion of constitutional norms.

In January 2021, on the first anniversary of the Capitol riot, Cheney returned to Congress with Liz. Democrats lined up to shake his hand. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hugged him - an unthinkable scene two decades earlier, emblematic of how the turbulence of the Trump years had upended political loyalties.

“It's not leadership that resembles any of the folks I knew when I was here for 10 years,” he lamented of the modern GOP in 2022.

How Will History Remember Dick Cheney?

Few American leaders have inspired such enduring fascination and debate. To his admirers, Cheney was a statesman of rare resolve, a man who acted decisively in a moment of existential threat. To his critics, he personified the overreach and moral compromises that followed 9/11 - the dark face of American power.

Either way, his influence was profound. Cheney's legacy endures in the machinery of national security, the redefinition of executive authority, and the still-simmering conflicts born of his worldview.

He is survived by his wife Lynne, daughters Liz and Mary Cheney, and seven grandchildren.

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