For decades Henry Kissinger has been conscipuous as a reviled and revered strategist, diplomat, memoirist, consultant and public speaker. This third and last installment of his memoires, covering his tenure as the US's secretary of state under President Gerald Ford, illuninates both his high profile and the strong emotions he evoked.
The book covers many of the controversial international issues of the mid-1970's, like detente with Moscow. Kissinger supporters will invoke the memoirs as proof that he was the master conjurer behind magical diplomatic feats; his detractors will say that the book covers up his role as the evil warlock who destroyed Vietnam.
What will an objective reader say about the book and its author? To start, Kissinger makes little effort to explain his "realist" conceptual framework. We do not learn that realism has venerable pioneer thinkers, including Thucydidies, Machiavelli and Bismarck, or that realism maintains that the international system is anarchic -- without a police force. This painful fact forces states to define their national interest in terms of survival and the aggrandizement of power. Peace is attained when states calibrate and accomodate their respective national interests and create a stable balance of power.
Perhaps Kissinger omitted these fundamentals because he has written about them elsewhere. If so, leaving them out of this book, meant for the general public, means that non-experts will wonder about the world view that informed his policies.
The author instead emphasizes the role of leaders. For Kissinger, they must be bold conceptual thinkers who can redefine notions of the possible. Plus, they must be able to create a stable equilibrium through alliances, large or limited wars, nuanced or blunt signals, permament or ephemeral detentes, deterrence or compellence, arms control or weapons deployments.
It makes sense for Kissinger to underscore the role of the statesman, for he dramatically and effectively lived that role. He had the wisdom and courage to engage both China and the Soviet Union in detente when he served under both Ford and his precessor, President Richard Nixon.
Another major theme of the books is the danger of Wilsonianism.
Kissinger strangely uses this term very broadly. We encounter the common meaning: Woodrow Wilson's post-World War I liberal vision of world peace achieved through international institutions such as the League of Nations, which promoted disarmament. However, the author also insists on using the term to refer to Ronald Reagan's right-wing clarion call for armed engagement with the Soviet Union.
Kissinger believes that these two camps share faults. They both value maximalist, unattainable goals; exalt ideology over pragmatism; and are intensely moralistic. Both types of Wilsonians embark on reckless foreign policy crusades that upset the balance between means and ends.
Kissinger the arch-realist prefers to maintain a prudent balance between goals and resources.
His realpolitik has often encouraged his critics to condemn Kissinger for being immoral. However, his detractors must admit that Kissinger at times recognizes that power politics and morality can rarely be completely divorced. For instance, Kissinger writes that Russia's mad quest for hegemony only provoked opposition; achieving a stable balance of power in Asia required the Americans and Chinese to reconcile; and equilibrium in the middle-east mandated that antagonists Washington and Cairo talk. In each case, realism was alloyed, if not with Christian idealism, than at least with good will and cooperation.
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