Aaron Million's Reviews > Diplomacy

This opus by Henry Kissinger is not for the faint of heart. While shorter than his White House memoirs, the book still clocks in at 835 pages. Unfortunately, many of these pages are consumed with Kissinger dissecting foreign policy moves and counter-moves, some from centuries ago. If the reader does not have a firm grasp of 20th century American foreign policy history and/or European military history from the past few centuries, he may find himself quickly sinking in the diplomatic quicksand. Kissinger seems to presume that the reader has at least a working knowledge of such events as the Crimean War.

At times, especially while reviewing European diplomatic maneuvers from the 1800s, even Kissinger admits that it can get confusing. That is saying something, as this man is one of the foremost experts on foreign policy and diplomacy. Notably, this book is only focused on certain areas: Europe, the United States, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union. All areas or countries that Kissinger is familiar with. There is almost no mention of Latin America, Central America, Australia, or Africa. Repeating a pattern from his White House books, Kissinger ignores Japan except where it concerns the country's involvement in WWII and a few pages at the end about its relationship with China. This seems to be a glaring weakness of the book, given Japan's importance in the world economy following WWII. Kissinger clearly has no interest in Japan, or the other areas mentioned, thus he makes it seems as only Europe and the U.S. matter where foreign policy is concerned.

In addition, his focus on the U.S. is mainly from WWI on up. Aside from an early chapter that seemed somewhat out of place comparing and contrasting Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, you would not think that America had any diplomacy before WWI. There is almost no mention of one of this country's most respected diplomats: John Quincy Adams. No mention of the negotiations with Spain over Florida in the 1810s/1820s or with Great Britain over the Oregon territory in the 1840s. No review of the annexation of Texas or the War with Mexico. There is only a brief mention of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How can the moment where the U.S. and the Soviet Union came closest to a nuclear war not be discussed in a book about diplomacy? Especially one that spends so much time discussing U.S.-Soviet relations? Deft diplomacy by John F. Kennedy (after many serious foreign policy stumbles) and Nikita Khrushchev backing down are the two things that kept that crisis from becoming a nuclear war. Apparently, Kissinger thinks that if he wasn't involved in it or didn't study it, then it is not worth writing about. This is unfortunate as diplomacy is more than just European, or Kissinger-involved American foreign policy, in nature.

Fortunately, once Kissinger gets to WWII, his writing style become far more engaging, and the narrative is easier to follow. For example, when writing about the Potsdam Conference involving Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin on page 434: “The Potsdam Conference rapidly turned into a dialogue of the deaf.” Kissinger obviously feels most at home discussing Cold War diplomacy because he lived it. In his chapters about FDR, Churchill, and Stalin he succeeds in showing each man's view and how it colored the geopolitical lens through which he looked at things. While Kissinger is certainly not unbiased when it comes to the Soviets, he is able to fairly present the concerns that Stalin and those after him had about democracies trying to contain the Soviet sphere of influence. Kissinger argues that, while mistakes were certainly made by American politicians, in all likelihood nothing that they would have done or said would have appeased Stalin other than total capitulation to the Soviet Union unilaterally expanding its presence across Central Europe and the Middle East.

When Kissinger turns to Vietnam, he provides an excellent analysis of how the U.S. slowly got itself entangled in Vietnam. Kissinger takes pains to point out the reasoning that Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Kennedy, used and how, in retrospect, their decisions appear misguided, their judgments faulty, and U.S. strategy clearly off-the-mark. But at the time that some of these decisions were made, they appeared to just be extensions of the global containment policy that began immediately following WWII. Kissinger does not give Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson a pass on their Southeast Asian decisions. But he does provide some needed context to help explain- especially in the cases of Truman and Eisenhower – the reasoning they used in making their decisions. With Kennedy and Johnson he, appropriately, less forgiving as by then the U.S. was becoming more arrogant than wise in its thinking about trying to contain communism. As for his own role in the Nixon Administration, he does not give much of a personal account as he did in his memoirs. Instead we get a summation of the negotiations.

Following Vietnam, Kissinger lapses into a few chapters concerning Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan's relationships with Soviet leadership. As Kissinger tended to do in his White House memoirs, unfortunately he gets bogged down in interminable discussions about the nuclear arms race. While this clearly was a top concern of policymakers on both sides, Kissinger simply goes into too much detail for the average reader. Discussing strike force capabilities and so forth causes one to struggle at times to get through the narrative. Also of note in this part of the book: zero mention of Jimmy Carter and the Camp David Accords. How can this be left out? That, to me, is a prime example of the good that an American president can do on the diplomatic front. To not discuss such a major accomplishment, but yet spare no ink in discussing SALT, leaves me wondering what exactly was Kissinger's purpose in writing this book.

Kissinger concludes with a chapter on the state of American relations with the world in 1993/1994, when he wrote this book. While he is generally spot-on with his analysis, I do question is assertion on page 834: “Through most of its history, America knew no foreign threat to its survival.” Somehow I think James Madison, watching the White House get torched by the British in the War of 1812, would disagree. This is a worthwhile read mainly for those interested in global politics, especially European and 20th century. But for a general reader or casual student of history, ultimately this may not be worth the effort.